Big 12/Pac-10 Hardwood Series

I’ve never really understood the Big 10/ACC Challenge. Why those conferences? Doesn’t Big 10/Pac-10 make more sense due to their college football connection? It’s not even a fair fight. The ACC has won every year and only Michigan St has a winning record out of the Big 10 schools. It’s been around long enough that it looks like its here to stay. One tweak I’d like to see is that each school play 2 games, 1 home, 1 away would be nice. It could also try and incorporate the 12th ACC team, who doesn’t play since there are only 11 schools in the Big 10. Although I do kind of like the penalty of the last place team being left out.

I mention all this because as I was looking at the upcoming college basketball schedule I saw some references to the Big 12/Pac-10 Hardwood Series. Not too terrible a name. Maybe a Pac-10/Big East matchup would be a little cooler. The farther the teams are apart the less likely they will play each other often. Now apparently last year was the 1st of this matchup. Nice job marketing this one, as I didn’t hear about it.

Here are this year’s matchups from the Pac-10. How many years until they can get all these games into a few day window instead of it running from November 29 until December 28?

Thursday, December 4, 2008
Oklahoma State at Washington
UCLA at Texas
USC at Oklahoma

Friday, December 5, 2008
Arizona at Texas A&M

Saturday, December 6, 2008
Baylor at Washington State
Oregon State at Iowa State

Sunday, December 7, 2008
Kansas State at Oregon
Nebraska at Arizona State
California at Missouri

Outside the four-day series window
Colorado at Stanford (Sat., Nov. 29, 2008)
Kansas at Arizona (Tue., Dec. 23, 2008)
Texas Tech at Stanford (Sun., Dec. 28, 2008)