By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

Iowa’s men’s basketball team will open Big Ten play with two games in the first seven days of December.

The Hawkeyes will begin the 20-game conference schedule on December 1 at Purdue, then play Indiana at home on December 7.

Iowa’s entire schedule was released on Wednesday following the announcement of the Big Ten schedule by the conference. Game times and television assignments will be announced at a later date.

The Hawkeyes are coming off an Elite Eight appearance in the NCAA Tournament in Ben McCollum’s first season as head coach.

Among the other features of the schedule:

• In January, Iowa will play its first three games at home, facing Ohio State (Jan. 2), Wisconsin (Jan. 6) and Maryland (Jan. 9).  The Hawkeyes will also have back-to-back home games during its final homestand — Minnesota (Feb. 27) and Washington (March 2).

• The Hawkeyes will play back-to-back league road games three times during the regular season, traveling to Rutgers (Jan. 12) and Nebraska (Jan. 16), USC (Feb. 3) and UCLA (Feb. 6) and Michigan (Feb. 20) and Wisconsin (Feb. 24).

• Iowa will play two of its final three games at home.  The regular season finale will be at Illinois on March 6.  It is the fourth time since 2020 that the two teams have squared off in the finale and it is the third time in that span that the game will be played in Champaign. It is the first time since 2015 that Iowa won’t play its finale on a Sunday.

• Iowa will play five Saturday Big Ten home games and a total of seven weekend home contests in 2026-27.

The complete schedule:

Nov. 3 — Lipscomb

Nov. 6 — Eastern Illinois

Nov. 10 — Virginia Tech at Sioux City

Nov. 15 — Creighton at Des Moines

Nov. 20 — at Xavier

Nov. 24 — UMBC

Nov. 28 — Prairie View A&M

Dec. 1 — at Purdue

Dec. 7 — Indiana

Dec. 10 — Iowa State

Dec. 13 — Western Illinois

Dec. 17 — Bethune-Cookman

Dec. 21 — Alabama at Des Moines

Dec. 29 — South Dakota

Jan. 2 — Ohio State

Jan. 6 — Wisconsin

Jan. 9 — Maryland

Jan. 12 — at Rutgers

Jan. 16 — at Nebraska

Jan. 23 — Penn State

Jan. 26 — at Ohio State

Jan. 30 — Nebraska

Feb. 3 — at UCLA

Feb. 6 — at USC

Feb. 10 — Oregon

Feb. 13 — at Northwestern

Feb. 16 — Michigan State

Feb. 20 — at Michigan

Feb. 24 — at Wisconsin

Feb. 27 — Minnesota

March 2 — Washington

March 6 — at Illinois

Photo: Ben McCollum will be heading into his second season as Iowa’s men’s basketball coach. (Keith Gillett/Icon Sportswire)