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Inside The Huskies

UW Basketball Team Finds It Tough To Build Big Ten Homecourt Advantage

The Huskies will host Purdue, Illinois and Indiana this coming season.
Dan Raley|
Opening tip at Alaska Airlines Arena.
Opening tip at Alaska Airlines Arena. | Dave Sizer photo

Dealing with a major rebuild once more, the University of Washington basketball team will host conference headliners Purdue, Indiana and Illinois in its third Big Ten season, seeing if it can keep up while defending Montlake.

So far, it's been tough to establish any sort of homecourt advantage at Alaska Airlines Arena.

With the release of who plays where among league opponents on Tuesday, the Huskies find themselves facing the same teams at home as they did two years ago and that didn't go well -- Danny Sprinkle's first UW team was able to beat just two of 10 Big Ten visitors at home in 2025.

The Huskies were 4-6 at home in conference play this past season, all of which doesn't bode well considering how hard it is to play on the road in the Big Ten.

A home conference record of 6-14 over two seasons won't get you into the NCAA Tournament.

With playing dates still to come, the Huskies (16-17 in 2026, 7-13 league play) will host Nebraska (28-7, 15-5), Illinois (28-9, 15-4), Purdue (30-9, 13-7), UCLA (24-12, 13-7), Indiana (18-14, 9-11), USC (18-14, 7-13), Rutgers (14-20, 6-14), Northwestern (15-19, 5-15), Oregon (12-20, 5-15) and Maryland (12-21, 4-18).

Attendance will be worth keeping an eye on, with a lot of curious people coming out to get a glimpse of various high-brow Big Ten basketball visitors such as defending NCAA champion Michigan or Michigan State.

With every Big Ten team having come through Montlake now, the novelty of eyeballing these fellow conference members from the Midwest could fall off some.

On the road, the Huskies will have to play Michigan (37-3, 19-1), Michigan State (27-8, 15-5), Wisconsin (24-11, 14-6), UCLA, USC, Ohio State (21-13, 12-8), Iowa (24-13, 10-10), Minnesota (15-18, 8-12), Oregon and Penn State (12-20, 3-17).

The Big Ten has every conference team play 14 other members just once each season, plus a home-and-home series with three league opponents. For geographical reasons, the UW will always play UCLA, USC and Oregon twice.

Meantime, the Huskies have just 11 scholarship players returning signed or committed and are seeking three or four more to fill out the roster. They're going to need all the reinforcements they can get between now and the start of the next basketball season.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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