Cal basketball: Should they consider non-conference games with UCLA and USC?

So one interesting quirk on the Cal women's basketball schedule: With only one game against the Los Angeles schools, Lindsay Gottlieb didn't flinch from adding another one to the schedule. UCLA will be coming to Berkeley in December. More from CalBears.com.

A quartet of matchups against NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament teams and a rare non-league matchup with UCLA highlight another exciting and challenging nonconference campaign for Cal women's basketball in 2015-16, head coach Lindsay Gottlieb announced Monday.

“We have put together a nonconference schedule designed to challenge our team early in the year. We will face high-quality opponents on the road, in Haas Pavilion and on a neutral court,” Gottlieb said. “We always want to test our program on a national platform, while also building qualities through tough competition that will help us compete for a Pac 12 title.”

On the men's side, Cal will only be playing UCLA and USC once this year. The games will be at home, so there will be no Los Angeles road trip. UCLA and USC will return to the regular schedule two years from now in 2017-18.

The way the Cal women have handled this situation got me thinking: Should we go the non-conference route and try and schedule a home-and-home the next two years?

Although I'm not usually in favor of making our Pac-12 schedule that much harder than it has to be, this is a really good year for the Bears to showcase their stuff. Perhaps Cal should consider adding UCLA and USC to their non-conference schedule the next two years to get around the absence of an extra game?

What do you all think? Let us know in the comments.