It's something that is recently becoming a trend in college basketball.

More and more often, teams are scheduling nonconference games in the middle of the conference schedule.

This is the case for two Big Ten teams this week, Purdue and MSU, who have scheduled nonconference opponents in the middle of the Big Ten season.

"We need to keep playing," Purdue head coach Gene Keady said.

The plan backfired for the Boilermakers, who were dropped by a tough Wisconsin-Milwaukee team 73-68 on Wednesday night at home.

MSU will play a nonconference game in the middle of its conference schedule Saturday against Oakland for the first time since the 2002-03 season, when they lost 76-75 to Syracuse.

MSU head coach Tom Izzo said that ESPN moved Thursday's game against Michigan from Wednesday to Thursday, and the game against Illinois from Wednesday back to Tuesday, which created a schedule of three games in six days.

"I had to do something to have a Saturday game here, and look what happened: They shrunk me on both sides," Izzo said.

"The only thing that made it worse was after we did it, they moved the Wednesday game to Thursday and the Wednesday game to Tuesday. If I would've known that, I wouldn't have done it like this."

This will be the third time the Spartans have played a nonconference opponent this late in the season since the 1999-2000 season and the first time the game will not be nationally televised.

"A couple times, we've done it because of TV, and a couple times, we've done it because of the situation and the cards we were dealt," Izzo said. "This year, it was more because of the cards we were dealt."

For junior center Paul Davis, who is nursing a sprained ankle, taking a game off from the rigid Big Ten schedule will be welcomed.

"It gets your head out of the Big Ten for a little while," Davis said. "You can get a different view of things and then get right back in it. We get right back in it with Illinois, so it could work out great for us."

The one issue Izzo has with the schedule is that the dates are made by a computer, as was the case this season, and MSU has only two weekend dates in front of its fans and students in the second half of the season.

"It's just that we felt, as a university and as an athletic department and as a basketball office, that it wasn't fair to our fans. It wasn't fair to football, and it wasn't fair to our recruiting," Izzo said. "So that's why we've done it."

Senior guard Kelvin Torbert, who played in the game against Syracuse two years ago, does not see that big of a change, but does see some positives in playing such a heavy schedule.

"It's not that different," he said. "We know we have a tough week coming up, and hopefully, playing back-to-back games like that is an early tournament type of experience."

Izzo said he knows the players will be happy with playing so many games.

"For a player, they're probably happy because they get to play more games and practice less," Izzo said.