Horizon League Modernizes Basketball Schedules for 2023-24
INDIANAPOLIS – The Horizon League is implementing an enhanced approach to its men’s and women’s basketball schedules for the upcoming 2023-24 season in a major move for student-athletes and supporters.
Why it Matters: Improved approach offers the competitive equity of a non-travel partner schedule while also offering the sustainability benefits of a travel-partner schedule contributing to a better student-athlete experience.
Dig Deeper: Click the links for complete #HLMBB and #HLWBB schedules.
The benefits of the new model include:
- Better student-athlete experience: minimizes missed class time and maximizes recovery time.
- More sustainability: keeping strategic geographic road trips to minimize travel costs.
- More competitive equity: a team’s schedule is no longer dependent on former travel partner’s facility conflicts; minimizes extended stretches of road games and time away from home.
- Basketball excellence: better positions League champion for an improved seed path; better positions student-athletes to play at peak performance throughout the entirety of League schedule.
The Horizon League men’s and women’s basketball schedule will feature:
- 20-game double-round robin.
- 11-week schedule starting on Nov. 29 for up to two games and resuming on Dec. 28.
- Regular season finale on March 2.
- Opening rounds of Horizon League Basketball Championship on March 5 and 7.
- Semifinals and Championship games in Indianapolis March 11-12. #MarchStartsHere
Major voices:
Horizon League Commissioner Julie Roe Lach
“I want to commend our administrators and coaches on their hard work and commitment to basketball excellence and improvement throughout the development of this new scheduling approach. The modernized model emphasizes student-athlete experience by improving travel, rest and preparation time, allowing our student-athletes to compete at peak performance throughout the season and improving competitive equity and balance across our League.”
Milwaukee Director of Athletics and former Horizon League Council Chair Amanda Braun.
“The new Horizon League basketball scheduling model is intended to reduce missed class time for our student-athletes, maximize recovery time between games, reduce the number of long road stretches, which is not only good for our student-athletes, but is great for our fans and communities as well.”
Oakland Director of Athletics and Chair of the Basketball Schedule Committee Steve Waterfield.
“The new scheduling model is a hybrid approach that focuses on our student-athletes. It provides a better cadence between home and away games throughout the League season. It also creates more opportunities for consistent rest and prep time between games, yet it still looks at travel efficiencies so that trips to the furthest away games is taken into account and allows for those to occur in a more efficient manner.”
Oakland Men’s Basketball Head Coach Greg Kampe
“The coaches throughout the League are very excited about the new League scheduling model that goes away from travel partners and gives us an extra day between games. This will allow all the athletes an extra day of rest and preparation which should mean a higher quality of basketball on the second game each week. While this is a major change for the fans, it is a good one that will increase the quality of play.”
Milwaukee Women’s Basketball Head Coach Kyle Rechlicz
“Creating a new Horizon League scheduling model was an important advancement for our League for this season and beyond. The basketball scheduling committee spent a tremendous amount of time reviewing the parameters and mock schedules to produce the best possible outcome for all the teams. This new model should provide every program a fair and equitable chance to compete for a championship while also allowing extra and necessary rest for our student-athletes.”