The Good Outweighs the Bad in WVU’s 2025-26 Big 12 Schedule Reveal

A pretty fair shake for Ross Hodge in his first year as the Mountaineer head coach.

West Virginia University basketball / Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI

Earlier this week, the Big 12 Conference released the men's basketball schedule matrix for the 2025-26 season. After taking a few days to study about this year's slate for the Mountaineers, I've got some thoughts.

The good

No trip to Kansas: West Virginia finally secured their first-ever win at The Phog a year ago, but it's unlikely that a team wins their two years in a row, especially when you have another first-year head coach on the job. Getting the Jayhawks at home creates a big opportunity for a signature win for the resume. The WVU Coliseum has been a house of horrors at times for Bill Self's squad.

East coast home-and-homes: The Big 12 made the right call by helping out West Virginia, giving them two games against the schools closest to them - Cincinnati, UCF, and Kansas State. That should be the case every year moving forward. If you want to build some sort of rivalry, you need to have the schools close in proximity to each other playing twice a season. Except next year, they need to swap out Kansas State for Iowa State, which is much closer.

Back to 18: Last season, the Big 12 experimented with playing 20 conference games, and as expected, the league's members did not enjoy the move. The league is already extremely challenging, so why create more opportunities for losses? Smart idea by going back to 18 league games.

The bad

The road slate: Arizona, Arizona State, Houston, and Iowa State on the road? Yikes. Houston has become just as dominant at home as Kansas has, even since their switch to the Big 12. We all know about Hilton magic and how nuts that place can be, but the two Arizona schools are just as tough. Of those four, I'd be surprised if the Mountaineers went .500 or better. Not too concerned with the road games at Oklahoma State or TCU, although Fort Worth hasn't treated the Mountaineers kindly over the years.

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