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While the Maryland men's basketball team will wait a few more weeks to learn its Big Ten schedule, the conference announced each team's opponents for the 2017-18 season on Monday.
The Terps will play Michigan, Michigan State, Northwestern, Penn State and Purdue at home and away, while hosting Iowa, Minnesota, Rutgers and Wisconsin at Xfinity Center. Maryland will play only on the road at Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska and Ohio State.
Six of those teams joined Maryland in the NCAA tournament last season, when coach Mark Turgeon's squad was a No. 6 seed and lost to No. 11 seed Xavier in its opening game.
The Terps enter this year hoping their trio of sophomores — guards Kevin Huerter and Anthony Cowan, and forward Justin Jackson — can help fill the void in production and leadership left by guard Melo Trimble's NBA pursuit.
As they prepare for the upcoming schedule, Turgeon will aim for chemistry and rhythm to develop in time for the early start to Big Ten play.
Because the Big Ten tournament will be at Madison Square Garden this season — thanks to a continued emphasis on the conference's eastern expansion after hosting it in Washington last March — the event will be a week earlier than normal.
The Big East has the venue reserved for its conference championship the week before the NCAA tournament begins, so the Big Ten tourney will start Feb. 28 with a week off before March Madness begins.
So, each Big Ten team will play two conference games — one home, one away — from Dec. 1-4 instead of waiting until after Christmas to begin league matchups.
That stretch comes in the same week as the ACC-Big Ten Challenge — the Terps will play at Syracuse on Nov. 27 — and days after two games in the Emerald Coast Classic in Florida over Thanksgiving weekend, the beginning of the five-game, 11-day spurt.
"It's been hard. It's been hard to get all of the games in," Turgeon told The Washington Post in June. "As coaches, we really didn't want to have to play over Christmas this year if we could help it. So, we decided to make everything fair and play two league games in December. Does it make December harder? Yeah."