University of Iowa, Big Ten announce 2020-21 Men’s Basketball schedule

IOWA CITY, Iowa  -The University of Iowa and Big Ten Conference announced its 2020-21 Men’s Basketball schedule on Wednesday.

The 5th-ranked Hawkeyes will play six of their seven nonconference games on Mediacom Court at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, including the first six of the season.

Iowa’s season begins next week as they host North Carolina Central on Wednesday, November 25th at 3 P.M. Then the Hawkeyes will host Southern University on November 27th at 4 P.M. Both games will be televised on the Big Ten Network.

The Hawkeyes will then host North Carolina in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge on December 8th and Northern Illinois on December 13th.

The home dates against Western Illinois and the Iowa Corn Cy-Hawk series against Iowa State are being finalized and will be announced at a later date.

Iowa closes its nonconference slate versus top-ranked Gonzaga on December 19th at 11 A.M. in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Iowa’s first of 20 conference games is scheduled for December 22nd in Iowa City against Purdue.

Iowa’s second conference game will be played on Christmas Day at Minnesota. It will mark just the third time in program history that the Hawkeyes will play on Christmas (the previous two times were in holiday tournaments in Hawaii in 1984 and 1988).

The Hawkeyes will play the Boilermakers, Nebraska, Penn State once at home, while playing Illinois, Michigan and Maryland once on the road. Iowa will then play the other seven league teams twice.

The Hawkeyes have seven players returning with starting experience, including All-American senior center Luka Garza, and upperclassmen all-conference honorees Jordan Bohannon and Joe Wieskamp, and Connor McCaffery, who led all Division I players in assist-to-turnover ratio a year ago.

Game times and television information for each game will be announced later.