Rumor: Cal men's basketball scheduling home-and-home with USC in 2024-25
The California Golden Bears and the USC Trojans will be playing each other.
There is a rumor online that Cal men’s basketball will continue to play their old rivals down in Los Angeles after both head to their separate conferences. Rocco Miller of the USBWA had this report that there will still be games between Cal and USC in the coming years.
California and USC are finalizing an agreement to begin a Home-and-Home series in Los Angeles as part of the 24-25 schedule, per multiple sources. Return game in Berkeley in 25-26. No official date, both sides are targeting opening night.
Obviously, it isn’t as glamorous as a football rematch, but with USC in the midst of a rebuild with Eric Musselman, it’ll be nice for Mark Madsen to get an early competitive matchup with a former rival and a new look roster. I would not be surprised if Cal has other matchups planned with former Pac-12 programs for both men’s and women’s hoops.
This isn’t the first post Pac-12 arrangement that’s been drawn up between the Cal revenue sports. Cal football will play Oregon State in the end of October.
Cal men’s basketball has already finalized their ACC opponents for next season as well.
Given that $c greed ruined the Conference of Champions and created substantial travel hardship across a broad array of NCAA sports with true student-athletes, my preference would be never playing them in regular season in any NCAA sport for the rest of this century. University of California Los Angeles is different as they felt they had to go along and will be providing some revenue support to Cal Athletics. Would prefer to play them or any other former Pac-12 team or teams like SD State and UNLV. For $c to be the first announcement if true is more than disappointing.
I'll never forgive SC for being the chief culprit in the implosion of the Pac-12. That said, we need money, and they'll likely draw better than whatever substitute nonconference game we could have come up with.