Michigan State released its 2026-27 schedule on Tuesday and it revealed another surprising non-conference opponent that made the NCAA Tournament a season ago.
Fans already knew about the UConn (Oct. 20) and Marquette (Oct. 25) exhibition games as well as a surprise Incarnate Word exhibition which will take place during the Izzone Campout but the program released the rest of its non-conference schedule just days after the Big Ten slate was unveiled.
Duke, Tennessee, Arkansas, Gonzaga, and Oakland were also known as part of the non-conference schedule, but there are a couple of new opponents that fans didn’t know about before Tuesday.
The Spartans will face Quinnipiac, Toledo, Detroit (welcome home, Mark Montgomery), Drake, Merrimack, Penn (welcome back, Fran McCaffery), and a team that’s coming off an NCAA Tournament appearance a year ago: Northern Iowa.
2026-2027 schedule is SET 🗓️ https://t.co/zFMPmdbUpq pic.twitter.com/HmEdGHAfXE
— Michigan State Men's Basketball (@MSU_Basketball) September 22, 2026
Northern Iowa will be sandwiched between Duke and Tennessee on Nov. 13 and it’ll be the first matchup between the two teams since 2010 when the Spartans got the better of the Panthers in the NCAA Tournament. A season ago, the Panthers made the NCAA Tournament as the 12-seed out of the Missouri Valley Conference, losing to St. John’s by 26 in the first round.
Northern Iowa could be considered a trap game for Michigan State
This is going to be a surprisingly tough matchup considering Northern Iowa returns eight of its top nine players in terms of minutes per game.
A tourney team returning just about everyone but their top scorer from a year ago coming to the Breslin in November in the middle of two ranked games? That could be a trap. The only big departure from last season is Trey Campbell who led the team with 13.7 points per game but the other two double-digit scorers are back and so are eight guys who averaged 10-plus minutes per game.
The Panthers also added a quartet of transfers, led by former four-star small forward Isaiah Johnson-Arigu who started his career at Miami before transferring to St. Thomas. They also added Carson Vis from Western Michigan, Ian Smikle from Tulsa, and Tate McCubbin from Austin Peay.
I’m not saying that Michigan State is going to be on upset alert in this game, but this isn’t the cakewalk that a normal mid-November non-conference game at the Breslin Center against a mid-major usually is.
Michigan State needs to lock in and avoid the dreaded letdown or trap that’s sandwiched between Duke and Tennessee.
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