Big Ten basketball stands to change as much as football with expansion (updated)

CHICAGO -- While football garners most of the headlines regarding the Big Ten's potential expansion, basketball stands to change just as much if the league adds schools.

Currently, men's basketball teams play 18 Big Ten games. They play eight schools twice and two schools once per year. Should the league expands to 12, 14 or even 16 teams, it could impact basketball scheduling, alter the number of teams or games at the Big Ten Tournament, add divisions or increase single-plays among schools.

"As far as the coaches go, (expansion) affects us with scheduling and the Big Ten Tournament," Illinois men's coach Bruce Weber said. "Those are the two things that we're worried about. I don't think anyone can give us answers yet because you don't know if's it's going to be 12 or 14 or 16. But once that happens, our concerns are what are some of the plans? What are you thinking about? That's what we're really worried about."

The Big Ten currently does not protect basketball rivalries for annual home-and-home meetings, which means long-standing rivals Indiana and Purdue often meet just once in a season. If expansion nets 16 schools, single-plays could dominate the scheduling structure or force the league into two or more divisions. The Big 12 has only one division, but scheduling is divided between north and south for home-and-home games. The 16-school Big East Conference has each school playing 12 opponents once and three opponents twice during its 18-game schedule.

"I know (the  Big East has) had some flaws with it," Weber said. "I guess if we go that high, the big thing is we've watched the Big East and some other people deal with that so maybe you can help make it better that way. Even right now it's not a perfect world. We have 11 and we don't play everybody so we've gone from 16 to 18."

Other basketball coaches are less concerned about potential expansion.

"It's kind of a wait-and-see right now for us because we don't know what's going to happen," Iowa women's coach Lisa Bluder said. "It's hard to predict those things or waste our time kind of thinking about how it's going to impact us."

"Until you know if it's going to be one team, two teams, three teams, five teams, you can't even figure out scheduling. Why even go through the exercise?" Northwestern men's coach Bill Carmody said. "The hard part is, are you going to do it and who are you going to get? The other stuff you're going to figure out."