Gophers women’s basketball team’s full schedule released

The Gophers women’s basketball team will play on in the Big Ten with Iowa superstar Caitlin Clark gone to the WNBA, but now they have USC star JuJu Watkins on their conference schedule.

Each team in the new 18-team Big Ten will play all the others once and one regional rival twice in an 18-game conference schedule announced Thursday.

For the Gophers, that means they will travel to Los Angeles midway through their conference schedule, in mid-winter back home in Minnesota. They’ll face Watkins at USC on Jan. 30 and then play UCLA across town on Feb. 2.

That also means the Gophers will play Wisconsin two times as their designated regional rival — New Year’s Eve in Madison and Jan. 26 at Williams Arena.

The Gophers will do so in Dawn Plitzuweit’s second season as the team’s coach, opening Nov. 4 vs. Central Connecticut State, the first of 10 consecutive nonconference games.

Iowa will come to Minnesota for a Feb. 6 game, a year after Clark and her Hawkeyes sold out Williams Arena weeks in advance.

Two Pacific Northwest teams — Oregon and Washington — will join the two Southern California schools in a remade conference long known as the Big Ten.

Oregon and Washington will travel to Minneapolis to each play the Gophers at Williams Arena, on Feb. 16 and Feb. 26 respectively.

The Gophers will start their Big Ten season at Nebraska on Dec. 8 and finish it March 1 at Michigan State. They’ll also play two other conference games in December, Penn State at home on Dec. 28 and that Dec. 31 game at Wisconsin.