Whether your favorite college hoops team plays a true gauntlet-of-a-schedule or faces literal cupcakes, I can assure that in listening to coachspeak over the years covering this silly sport, every one of them will say the same of their degree of difficulty entering the season: that the schedule their team faces is unrelenting and brutal.
Some college coaches, though, are more truthful than others and have the track record to back up their big talk.
Gonzaga, for instance, consistently schedules aggressively in its nonconference slate to make up for any lost opportunities it has in playing in the WCC. Michigan State and Tom Izzo are also notorious for lining up an onslaught.
But which programs actually have the most difficult schedules in 2023-24? Which coaches are doing more than lip service in the preseason to set expectations accordingly?
We looked over the schedules and came to our own conclusions below. For this exercise we weighted nonconference schedules slightly more than conference schedules (to avoid having a list full of Big 12 teams), but tried to account for both to some degree. We will also at times reference Cameron Salerno’s latest article in which he ranked some of the best games of the upcoming season for the preseason AP Top 25 teams.
Let’s get into it with a look at five notable tough schedules for 2023-24:
1. Michigan State
Notable games
vs. No. 2 Duke, Nov. 14 in Champions Classicvs. No. 12 Arizona, Nov. 23 in Acrisure Classicvs. No. 20 Baylor, Dec. 16 in Detroitvs. No. 3 Purdue, March 2 in West Lafayette, Indiana
Schedule thoughts: Tom Izzo talks a big talk about his schedule every year, and every year, he walks a big, elongated walk by lining up one of the toughest schedules in the sport. And this year his Spartans — ranked No. 4 in the preseason AP Top 25 — once again have a brutal schedule in nonconference play once again. The showdown vs. Duke in the Champions…
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