2026 Washington basketball non-conference schedule has different look

Third-year coach Danny Sprinkle and the Washington Huskies won't be traveling far from home, outside of a flight over the Pacific Ocean, during the 2026-27 non-conference slate.

UW unveiled its entire men's basketball non-conference schedule Tuesday, featuring Big 12 Conference powers Baylor, BYU, and Utah. The Cougars will face the Huskies in the opening round of the Southwest Maui Invitational on November 23. The other two games Sprinkle's program will play in the annual basketball showcase in Hawaii are yet to be determined, but one will come against either Clemson or Ole Miss.

The Huskies are 29-35 overall and 11-29 in Big Ten Conference play over the past two seasons under Sprinkle, and will host cross-state rival Washington State for an exhibition at Alaska Airlines Arena on October 25, the first time the programs won't meet during the regular season since 1917, before tipping off the regular season against Colgate on November 2.

UW returns to the court a week later to host Mississippi Valley State of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, only the second time the two basketball programs have faced off and the first since the 2013-14 season when, under then-coach Lorenzo Romar, the Huskies came away with a 95-80 win.

Six of UW's seven non-conference games in Seattle will be at home with the other, a December 19 meeting with Baylor, being at Climate Pledge Arena. The only true road game is a November 14 trip to face Utah, the first meeting between the two former Pac-12 schools in Salt Lake City in 2023-24, a 95-90 loss to the Utes.

Sprinkle nearly checked all the Beehive State schools off his list except for his former employer, Utah State. UW comes back to Hec Edmundson Pavillion to host Utah Tech on Nov. 19 before heading out to Maui four days later to face BYU.

The Huskies close out their non-conference slate against Norfolk State (Nov. 29), Southern Utah (Dec. 8), Baylor (Dec. 19) and Cornell (Dec. 28) before opening their Big Ten schedule in January.