The Northern Kentucky men’s basketball non-conference schedule is starting to take shape with about two months to go before the season begins.
On Friday, the University made it official that they’ll open the 2024-25 season in Tallahassee on Nov. 4 to face Florida State University at the Tucker Center. This will be the first meeting all-time between the two programs. The announcement comes a day after they released the date with the University of Cincinnati at Truist Arena will take place on Nov. 19.
That’s seven non-conference games set so far with another 4-5 potentially open dates.
After opening the season at Florida State, they’ll then head to West Lafayette, Indiana to face the national runner-up Purdue on Nov. 8.
A home date with Nicholls State comes November 14, the game with Cincinnati on the 19th and playing at the College of Charleston on Nov. 27.
Two games in December have been set, Dec. 3 at Akron and a home game with South Carolina State on Dec. 21.
The three dates with FSU, Purdue and Cincinnati have been made official by the University, the dates with Nicholls, College of Charleston, Akron and South Carolina State were reported by bracketeer.org‘s Rocco Miller on his X account.
NCAA Division I teams can play up to 31-32 regular season games, depending on a multi-team event (MTE) a team takes part in and whether it is for two or three games. Division I teams schedule 29 games usually with an MTE in November or December. Last season, the Norse hosted an MTE with Long Island University and Texas A&M Corpus-Christi. This season, the Norse’s MTE will be the Twyman-Stokes NKU Classic. The Norse, Cincinnati, and Nicholls will participate in this three-game MTE. Nicholls plays at NKU on Nov. 14, Nicholls will play at Cincinnati on Nov. 15 and the Bearcats and Norse meeting on the 19th. With 20 conference games on the slate, it leaves a few more dates open for the Norse for an opponent.
NKU will be in the conversation once again as one of the top teams in the Horizon League, coming off a 18-15 season in 2023-24 and returning six of their top eight rotational players while they’ll get Sam Vinson and Hubertas Pivorius back from injury. They also added some pieces in the transfer portal and high school, which includes Paulius Rapolis, a 7-foot, 3-star prospect, the No. 20-rated prep player in Florida and the No. 26-rated center in the nation.
The Norse have won the Horizon League conference title and reached the NCAA tournament four times in the last seven years, one of those trips wiped out due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
