The relevancy of college basketball’s nonconference slate every November and December depends largely on the ambitions of about 20 of its most accomplished and/or prominent coaches.
We are coming off a 2025-26 season that saw quite possibly the best conglomeration of non-con hoops ever, with 45 ranked-on-ranked matchups outside of conference and postseason play. That’s believed to be a single-season record.
Can next season top it? It’s still too early to tell, but at the very least, fans can find optimism in the intentions of the two coaches who just squared off in the national title game. Dusty May and Dan Hurley have no desire to slow down when it comes to scheduling up before their respective league slates take over.
It’s all too fitting, then, that their teams will run it back in the first week of the 2026-27 season.
May’s Wolverines and Hurley’s Huskies will meet on Nov. 6 at Boston’s TD Arena for a title game rematch, the coaches told CBS Sports. The tilt will be put on by the Naismith Hall of Fame, whose group arranges a handful of high-profile one-off neutral-site games every season, such as the UConn-BYU special in Boston last year.
In the past 30 years, men’s college basketball has been able to devise title-game rematches between nonconference opponents more often than one might think. But getting the two teams that played for the natty to run it back so quickly the ensuing season — and effectively carrying over momentum from one year to the next — is a rarity. When Michigan and Connecticut square off in Beantown it will mark only the third time since at least the 1990s that men’s D-I gets a championship game replay in the first week of the season.
Here are the 10 run-backs since 1996. Teams with an asterisk won both the national title and the ensuing rematch.
Title game rematch and locationResultDateKentucky-Syracuse (Sullivan Arena, Anchorage, Alaska)*Kentucky 87, Syracuse 5311.28.96Arizona-Kentucky (Lahaina Civic Center, Maui, Hawaii)Arizona 89, Kentucky 7411.25.97Connecticut-Duke (Madison Square Garden, NYC)*UConn 71, Duke 6611.12.99Michigan State-Florida (Breslin Center, MSU)*MSU 99, Florida 9312.6.00Maryland-Indiana (Conseco Fieldhouse, Indianapolis)Indiana 80, Maryland 74 (OT)12.03.02North Carolina-Illinois (Dean Dome, UNC)*UNC 68, Illinois 6411.29.05Florida-Ohio State (Value City Arena, OSU)Ohio State 62, Florida 4912.22.07North Carolina-Michigan State (Dean Dome, UNC)*UNC 89, MSU 8212.01.09Duke-Butler (IZOD Center, East Rutherford, N.J.)*Duke 82, Butler 7012.04.10Villanova-Michigan (Finneran Pavilion, Villanova)Michigan 73, Villanova 4611.14.18
The Huskies and Wolverines will set the tone for a pair of nonconference schedules that should rank near the top of college basketball’s most difficult gamuts. This is especially important for next season, which will be the first to have a 76-team NCAA Tournament. It will never be easier to qualify for March Madness than in 2027, meaning the regular season’s substance and sense of urgency will be diminished.
The only way to push back against that is to have coaches eagerly schedule fellow Top 25 foes. Hurley and May understand the assignment.
Remember, in November 2024 two-time champion UConn flew to Maui and infamously left winless, providing a plot twist that helped define that season. Not long after, Hurley publicly swore off multi-game events moving forward. Last season he delivered on that promise by scheduling six notable nonconference games against high-major opponents, including reigning champion Florida, Kansas and Arizona. That schedule set the tone to allow Connecticut to earn a No. 2 seed and play its way to a third title game in a four-year span.
Hurley will be one-upping last season’s non-con offering by going to seven high-major opponents. (The college basketball schedule is also increasing by a game, from 31 to 32.)
Here’s UConn’s most notable non-league games for 2026-27. (Update: Both UConn home games are defaulted to Storrs/Gampel Pavilion until a decision is made otherwise.)
vs. Michigan on Nov. 6 (in Boston) vs. Ohio State on Nov. 13 (in Storrs, start of a home-and-home)@ Arizona on Nov. 18 (return of a home-and-home)vs. Duke on Nov. 25 (in Las Vegas)vs. Illinois on Dec. 4 (in Chicago)vs. Kansas on Dec. 12 (in Storrs, return of a home-and-home)vs. Virginia on Dec. 20 (in New York City)
That septet could well prove to be the most difficult non-con slate in the sport: It’s conceivable every one of those games will involve two ranked teams when they’re played. The seven high-major non-con games are one shy of the eight Hurley told me he might schedule when we discussed the matter last season.
“I would’ve gone to eight if I thought this would’ve been like last year’s Big East,” Hurley said. “But I think this year’s Big East is going to be a lot better. A lot more teams put together better rosters.”
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As for May, the coach of the reigning national champs wanted to lean into games with massive appeal. The Wolverines and Huskies have won three of the past four national titles. There is no better marketing vehicle for the first week of the season than to have UConn and Michigan find each other five days into the season.
The rest of Michigan’s nonconference schedule figures to be formidable — and it’s not even done yet. Most notably, like UConn, the Wolverines have a game scheduled against Duke. That one is currently slated for Dec. 21 at Madison Square Garden.
Here’s Michigan’s 2026-27 non-con docket vs. high-major opponents:
vs. UConn on Nov. 6 (in Boston) vs. Marquette on Nov. 11 (in Ann Arbor, start of a home-and-home)@ Villanova on Nov. 21 (return of a home-and-home)Three games in Players Era Tournament on Nov. 24-27 (in Las Vegas)vs. Duke on Dec. 21 (in New York City)
The Players Era opponents are TBD as of now, but there could be eight ranked teams in Michigan’s 16-school bracket, meaning the Wolverines will almost certainly play at least two of these schools with preseason Top 25 qualifications: Gonzaga, Iowa State, Louisville, Tennessee, St. John’s, Alabama and Miami.
That’s seven games — with another still under consideration. May told CBS Sports he’s looking into adding one more high-major opponent to the schedule if he can find the right opponent in the next few weeks for a neutral-site game. If that happened, Michigan would be in the neighborhood of Gonzaga for the most high-major nonconference opponents for next season.
Michigan is a lock to be a preseason top-five team, if not No. 2 behind Florida. It’s refreshing to see May actively hunting for really good games while simultaneously playing in a loaded Big Ten.
The UConn-Michigan rematch has a whiff of NFL scheduling touch to it as well; that league does a great job programming rematches early in the season for storyline-building purposes. And so we’ll have it this November in college basketball.
Perhaps it can become an annual staple: Let’s get the two teams that meet in the national championship to make sure they face each other in the first week of the season. It’s the one element to the sport’s opening week that’s been missing and seems easy to fix. Fortunately, the right two coaches at the right two programs are all too happy to set an example of how the best programs should be thinking about scheduling.
