Less than three months until the start of the 2026-27 men’s basketball season, we have Ohio State's nonconference schedule.
With the NCAA expanding the regular-season schedule to 32 games, OSU will play more than 11 nonconference opponents for the first time since 2017-18, when they faced 13, and included among Ohio State’s 12 nonconference games are a season opener against BYU in Salt Lake City on Nov. 2, a game at Connecticuton Nov. 13 and a CBS Sports Classic date against Kansas in Madison Square Garden on Dec. 19. A road game against Notre Dame and home one against Vanderbilt round out the high-major opponents on the schedule.
It will still be a while before we know when the Buckeyes will play their Big Ten games. Dates, times and broadcast
information for the full season will be finalized later.
Here are five thoughts on Ohio State’s 2026-27 men’s basketball nonconference schedule.
The home slate is similar to last season
Last year, Ohio State’s nonconference schedule featured seven home games against teams with an average preseason national ranking at BartTorvik.com of 247.4. Remove Notre Dame, OSU's lone high-major opponent at home, from the mix, and the ranking dropped to 277.7. Those six games were against IU Indy, Purdue Fort Wayne, Appalachian State, Western Michigan, Mount St. Mary’s and Grambling State.
This year, the Buckeyes will play eight home games during the nonconference portion of their schedule. One is against Vanderbilt, which is No. 24 according to Torvik, but the other seven are all against mid-major teams ranked outside of the top 200.
Here’s how those seven games shake out, from highest-rated to lowest:
Stony Brook (231)Youngstown State (256)UMBC (259)Lipscomb (260)Marshall (283)Prairie View A&M (296)Mississippi Valley State (364)
Those seven teams' national preseason rankings average out to 278.4 according to Torvik. Overall, the average national ranking of Ohio State’s eight home nonconference games is 246.6.
Worth watching: Of those six buy games last season, only two brought in more than 10,000 announced fans. The Buckeyes averaged 9,023 fans in the six games, with the win against Appalachian State on Nov. 11 drawing the second-lowest attendance for a regular-season game in Schottenstein Center history at 7,938.
Ohio State, by the way, is No. 18 at Torvik.
There’s no easing into the year
The first true test for last year’s team did not arrive until Nov. 28, when the Buckeyes went to Pitt for a true road game. Until that point, Ohio State had opened 6-0 by beating a down Notre Dame team and five mid-majors all inside the Schottenstein Center.
In 2026, by the time Ohio State gets to Nov. 28, it will have played three high-major teams, mostly in hostile territory. The Buckeyes open with what will essentially be a road game against BYU on Nov. 2, the earliest start to a season in program history, and after playing home games against Youngstown State (Nov. 6) and Marshall (Nov. 9), they will travel to Connecticut to face the Huskies on their home floor.
BYU and UConn are ranked preseason Nos. 38 and 11, respectively, by Torvik. Home games versus Prairie View A&M and UMBC follow before the Buckeyes host Vanderbilt in the marquee home game of the nonconference schedule.
Those games against BYU, UConn and Vanderbilt will be three significant tests for the Buckeyes before they even get to December and the start of Big Ten play.
Mississippi Valley State is the worst-rated team in KenPom.com history
Ohio State’s final game before a break around Christmas comes against a team that has not won more than nine games in a season since 2011-12. The Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils have finished as KenPom.com's lowest-rated team in the nation each of the last three seasons and in four of the last six.
A member of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, the Delta Devils have won just one nonconference game against a Division I opponent in the last four seasons, when they beat North Alabama at home on Nov. 28, 2022. They are 12-115 over the last four seasons, with five of those wins coming during the 2022-23 season, and they are ranked No. 365 in KenPom history.
Mississippi Valley State did make the 2012 NCAA Tournament as a No. 16 seed, when it lost to No. 16 seed Western Kentucky 59-58 in Dayton. It also played Ohio State in the 1992 NCAA Tournament, a game the Buckeyes won 83-56.
December will be a telling month
Ohio State’s longest homestand of the year will be a four-game stretch from Nov. 16-29 with Prairie View A&M, UMBC, Vanderbilt and Lipscomb all visiting the Schottenstein Center. The current schedule then has a 13-day gap before the Buckeyes go to Notre Dame on Dec. 12, but it surely won’t remain that way.
When the Big Ten announces its dates and times for games, the Buckeyes will assuredly have at least one game in between Lipscomb and Notre Dame. Ohio State has played two Big Ten games in early December in each of the last three seasons and in seven of the eight years since the league expanded to 20 conference games.
Tentatively write in two early-December Big Ten games for Ohio State between tipoffs against Lipscomb and Notre Dame, and you’ve got a run of four out of five games against high-major competition in the span of 19 days culminating with a date against Kansas inside Madison Square Garden. The final nonconference game is the Dec. 22 home date with Mississippi Valley State, which could also indicate that the Buckeyes will play their first of 18 straight Big Ten games before month’s end.
That would be a scenario with seven December games, five against high-major foes and three in Big Ten play.
No nonconference break in Big Ten play
Last season, Ohio State headed to Nashville to take on Virginia on Valentine’s Day for a rare breather from the grind of Big Ten play. The game was scheduled to help better prepare the Buckeyes for the NCAA Tournament, and coach Jake Diebler said afterward that he felt it was a benefit to his team, but no such game is on this year’s schedule.
Ohio State men's basketball beat writer Adam Jardy can be reached at ajardy@dispatch.com, on Bluesky at @cdadamjardy.bsky.social or on Twitter at @AdamJardy.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: 5 thoughts on Ohio State's 2026-27 full nonconference schedule
