Last season’s Big 12 schedule wasn’t kind to anyone. The Arizona Wildcats were no exception as the team had two occasions when it had to compete on the road one day then be back in Tucson to compete 48 hours later. The less-than-optimal airports in many Big 12 cities occasionally forced the team to pay for charters so they could get back home to practice between games. There will be similar challenges again this season based on the schedule released Thursday afternoon.
Arizona will have the most complications
the weekends of Oct. 23-25 and Nov. 6-8. Those encompass the difficult road trip to West Virginia and Cincinnati as well as a split home/road weekend facing Utah in Tucson and Texas Tech in Lubbock. However, the latter should be easier than when Arizona had to play Texas Tech in Lubbock on a Wednesday then get back home to face No. 13 TCU on Friday.
The bulk of the schedule has a pattern this year, which Arizona head coach Rita Stubbs said wasn’t the case last year. She felt it was important if the conference was ever going to make its schedule easier on the teams.
“Most of us cannot play on football game day, and the conference hasn’t decided whether we’re going to be labeled a Friday-Sunday conference or Thursday-Saturday…So there’s no definitiveness with that portion of it,” Stubbs said in late October. “Until we can get to that point, I don’t know how we can solve it.”
Five of Arizona’s 10 weekends follow a Friday-Sunday pattern like they did in the Pac-12. Two of the remaining five have just one match scheduled. Two others involve BYU, which does not play on Sundays so follows a Thursday-Saturday pattern.
The Wildcats also have a slate that is as close to the old “travel partner” scheduling of the Pac-12 as the league can get. Since Oklahoma State doesn’t sponsor volleyball, there’s an odd number of programs. The distance of some programs also complicates matters for a true travel partner approach. However, the conference paired the teams up as much as it could.
The Wildcats will travel to Baylor and TCU over the same weekend. They will go to Cincinnati and West Virginia the same weekend. One of their matchups against BYU is a road trip to Salt Lake City and Provo. UCF and Houston aren’t close together, but their major airports make them a logical pair. Arizona won’t travel there this year, but the two teams are set to come out West the same weekend. Kansas and Kansas State are also paired against the Arizona teams the same weekend.
The 15-team league plays 18 matches. Each team plays 14 of its conference foes once. The other four opponents get home-and-away matchups. Arizona and Arizona State always play twice. The other three teams the Wildcats will see twice this season are Texas Tech, BYU, and Utah.
Big 12 play starts for Arizona on Sunday, Sept. 27 at Colorado. The Buffaloes went 23-9 overall and 12-6 in conference play last year. Like the Wildcats, they lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The two teams played just once with the Buffs winning 3-1 in Tucson on Oct. 8, 2025.
Arizona’s conference home opener comes the following Friday when Iowa State comes to McKale Center. The Wildcats then host Texas Tech for the first of two meetings this season.
The Cyclones start things on Oct. 2. They swept the match against the Wildcats in Ames last year. They finished 23-8 overall and 12-6 in league play. They also lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Arizona welcomes the Red Raiders on Sunday, Oct. 4. The two teams played once last year. That match took place in Tucson where Arizona won 3-1. This year, they will meet twice with the Wildcats travelling to Lubbock on Sunday, Nov. 8.
The Wildcats take their first weekend road trip the following week when they visit TCU and Baylor. Last year both teams came to Tucson where Arizona’s sweeps of the 16th-ranked Bears and the 13th-ranked Horned Frogs helped break its NCAA Tournament drought.
Baylor ended the season 18-10 overall and 12-6 in the Big 12. It lost in the second round of the tournament. TCU was 21-11 overall and 10-8 in the conference. It bowed out of the tournament to Texas A&M in the second round.
This year’s match against the Horned Frogs takes place on Friday, Oct. 9. Arizona faces BU on Sunday, Oct. 11.
The Wildcats have a slightly shortened span between matches the following week because one of its opponents is BYU. It starts with a trip up I-10 to ASU on Thursday, Oct. 15 for the first match of the season against the Sun Devils. Arizona’s in-state rivals swept the series last year when they won the Big 12 for the second straight season.
ASU went 28-4 overall and 17-1 in the Big 12 last season. It was dismissed from the NCAA Tournament in the Sweet 16 by Creighton.
The Wildcats return to Tucson to host the Cougars on Saturday, Oct. 17. It is their only home match in a string of six contests between Oct. 9 and Oct. 25.
Arizona split its matches with BYU last season. The Wildcats defeated the No. 21 Cougars 3-1 on Nov. 5 in Tucson. Two weeks later, 25th-ranked BYU beat UA 3-1 in Provo. The two matches were part of a 22-9 overall and 10-8 Big 12 season for the Cougars that ended in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Arizona wraps up its stretch of five matches out of six on the road with a trip to the eastern part of the country. The Wildcats make one of its toughest trips by swinging to Morgantown and then to Cincinnati.
Last time UA made this trip, the team flew to Kentucky, rode a bus to Cincinnati, played a match, boarded another bus for a five-hour trip to Morgantown, played the second match, then bussed back to Pittsburgh to take a commercial flight home. The Wildcats were gone for almost a week and got back in the wee hours of a Monday morning, but they returned with two victories.
Unless a charter can be arranged at some point in the trip, they will make the trip in reverse this time. They were able to charter the return trip from Ames and Lubbock during the 2025 season.
The schedule swings back in the other direction after the lengthy stretch of road games. Arizona plays four of the next five in McKale Center and has a week off between two matches.
It starts with Houston visiting on Oct. 30 and UCF coming to town on Nov. 1. Both games will be played at noon MST. Arizona defeated both teams 3-1 on the road last year. These Cougars finished the season 9-20 overall and 2-16 in the league. The Knights were 17-12 and 8-10.
The Wildcats have another oddly timed weekday game on Friday, Nov. 6 when Utah comes to town for the first matchup between the teams. They will play at noon on a Friday for the second straight week. The early start on Nov. 6 could be due to the fact that Arizona has to be in Lubbock on Sunday.
Arizona split its matches with the Utes last season. Both went the distance with the Wildcats winning 3-2 in Tucson and Utah emerging with the 3-2 victory in Salt Lake City. Utah went 15-15 overall last season and was 7-11 in conference play. The Utes lost in the opening round of the tournament.
First serve against Texas Tech happens in Lubbock less than 48 hours after the match against Utah begins. The Wildcats and Red Raiders play at 11 a.m. MST on Sunday, Nov. 8.
The teams faced each other twice in 2025. The first could have been disastrous for an Arizona team that was very much on the bubble for the NCAA Tournament. The Wildcats went to Texas and got swept by a Raiders team that ended the year 10-20 overall and 2-16 in the Big 12.
The loss came during a period when Arizona had to fly from Iowa to Arizona to play games scheduled two days apart one week then go to Texas and head back to Tucson to do the same thing the following week. Still, it looked like a devastating blow for the Wildcats.
They avenged that loss the following week when the Red Raiders came to Tucson. Arizona won the return match 3-1.
This season, the Texas Tech match leads into a week off for the Wildcats. They do not play again until Sunday, Nov. 15 when ASU comes to town for the second rivalry game.
Arizona will make the trip to Utah to play BYU and the Utes on Thursday, Nov. 19 and Saturday, Nov. 21, respectively.
The regular season wraps up with matches against Kansas on Wednesday, Nov. 25 and Kansas State on Friday, Nov. 27. It’s the only time Arizona will face the Jayhawks and the other Wildcats in 2026.
UA’s nonconference schedule will be released at a later date.
Arizona finished 17-13 overall and 10-8 in the Big 12 last year. It made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2018 and won a tournament game for the first time since 2016.
