The Arizona State men's basketball team will play 19 home games in 2012-13 and opens its season against Central Arkansas on Nov. 10 -- matching the earliest start in school history.
The top name among the the non-conference opponents to play at Wells Fargo Arena will be DePaul of the Big East Conference on Dec. 12. ASU will return the favor and visit Chicago to play DePaul in 2013-14. DePaul will be the first Big East opponent to play the Sun Devils in Tempe in 19 years, dating back to ASU's overtime victory over Villanova in December 1993.
Other non-conference home games are schedule against Florida A&M, Cornell, Arkansas Pine Bluff, Sacramento State, Hartford, Cal State Northridge, Dartmouth and Coppin State.
The non-conference schedule includes just one road game (Texas Tech) and two neutral sites games in Las Vegas (Arkansas and Creighton/Wisconsin).
"We recognize the non-conference schedule may not ultimately have the quality of depth that we have had the past few seasons, but Arkansas, DePaul and Texas Tech all will be vastly improved," ASU coach Herb Sendek said. "We will be playing either Creighton or Wisconsin in Las Vegas, and both of them are potentially top-10 teams this year."
The Sun Devils open the Pac-12 portion of their season at home on Wednesday, Jan. 2, against Utah. It will be the first time in five years that they have opened conference play at home.
The Wednesday games are a new wrinkle in the Pac-12 schedule, deviating from the traditional Thursday/Saturday schedule. ASU will play four Wednesday games against Pac-12 opponents.
The 18-game conference schedule includes home/home matchup with seven of their 11 Pac-12 rivals. The Sun Devils will skip this season's trip to the Bay Area and play Stanford and California only at home; meanwhile they will play the two Oregon schools on the road, but not at Wells Fargo.
Territorial Cup games against Arizona are scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 19, in Tempe and Saturday, March 9, in Tucson.
