BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Athletic Department officials have taken an uncommon approach to filling a hole on the 2018 football schedule.
UW has agreed to a three-game deal with Western Kentucky that will involve one football and two men's basketball games.
The Hilltoppers will face Wisconsin in its football season opener at Camp Randall Stadium on Sept. 1, 2018. Western Kentucky will play the Badgers in men's basketball at the Kohl Center on Dec. 17, 2017.
The schools will meet again in men's basketball at Diddle Arena in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on Dec. 12, 2018. UW Director of Athletics Barry Alvarez said other schools have created similar scheduling packages, but this is a first for him.
"You have be creative in what you're doing with scheduling – to fill your schedule and match the open dates with someone else," he said. "Sometimes you have to do these things to make it all work."
Western Kentucky, out of Conference USA, is coming off a football season in which it was 12-2 overall, won the Miami Beach Bowl and finished ranked 24th in the final Associated Press poll.
Jeff Schmidt, the UW associate athletic director who oversees football scheduling for the Badgers, said the school had been looking at possibly playing a neutral site game in that slot, but "the pieces didn't fit."
Schmidt said Western Kentucky officials proposed the three-game arrangement in lieu a single guarantee for football.
"The inventory for other schools available out there was a really, really short list," he said.
The Hilltoppers have one of the most successful men's basketball programs in the nation. They've won 42 conference titles during their history – only Kansas and Kentucky have more – and they rank among the top 10 in 20-win seasons with 43.
