There’s just 16 nationally televised college basketball games today.
That’s not the total number of games, there’s 65 men’s games across the country and 85 women’s games. Most of it’s on a streaming platform, that’s all. That includes both of Marquette’s teams, by the way.
In fact, were it not for a big pile of “arranged by television networks” event games, there might not even be this much basketball on TV today. I presume that’s because everyone ran in fear of the planned tripleheader of College
Football Playoff games that were scheduled long in advance for today. That’s also obviously eating up a lot of network time with ABC/ESPN carrying the first game and TNT carrying the last two. ESPN has to give their game the big treatment, but they’re kicking over to basketball after that wraps up. There’s also FCS playoffs and the Division 2 football title game. I get it.
Just kinda lonely out here for basketball reasons.
The biggest games of the day are the two women’s games that poke through to national television. This is the second year of Fox’s Champions Classic event, so we get #16 Louisville vs #17 Tennessee bright and early from Brooklyn, followed by #1 UConn vs #11 Iowa.
Over on the men’s side, there’s only two ranked vs ranked games, even though CBS tried very hard with the CBS Sports Classic. It’s not their fault that Kentucky and Ohio State have slipped. In any case, CBS still gets a ranked battle in #8 Houston vs #14 Arkansas at the Prudential Center in New Jersey, and then ESPN gets a good one at Madison Square Garden with #3 Duke facing #19 Texas Tech.
If you’re interested in tomfoolery — or perhaps literally Tom-foolery — may I point out Oakland vs #9 Michigan State at 11am Central on the Big Ten Network? Last year, Tom Izzo and Greg Kampe wore matching Grinch sweaters when they played right around the same time of the year. The hijinks continued to the postgame press conference when Kampe crashed Izzo’s chat with the media after MSU won 77-58. Who knows what these two have cooked up this time?
Here’s the full national television schedule for college basketball today! All times Central, of course.
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