Your College Basketball Saturday Viewing Guide: January 26, 2019

We’ve got 30 games on national television today, highlighted by the Big 12/SEC Challenge, but the day still feels ever so slightly more empty than usual.

Part of this has to be because the Big East is only playing one game today: Marquette at Xavier. Or rather, part of this can be explained with the reason why that’s happening. There are three Big East games on the slate for tomorrow, along with four games involving teams (with one overlap with the Big East) currently ranked in the Associated Press top 25. The TV networks are taking advantage of the fact that it’s the weekend in between the Super Bowl to spread their best basketball broadcasts across both Saturday and Sunday.

Can’t really blame them.

The highlight game of the day is the crown jewel of the Big 12/SEC Challenge, with #9 Kansas taking their talents to Rupp Arena to face #8 Kentucky. The second best game in the challenge is one that no one was probably expecting to be up there: #24 Iowa State heading to Oxford to face #20 Ole Miss. The luck of the draw in that inter-conference challenge led to the SEC getting two really important league games going on to occupy the four squads that don’t have a numerical counterpart in the Big 12. First, there’s #24 LSU going on the road against Missouri in a Tiger-on-Tiger fight, then there’s #16 Auburn (man, there’s a lot of tigers in the SEC) visiting #22 Mississippi State. That’s a pretty good break to catch there.

There’s one ranked team on the road game that we haven’t mentioned here yet, and I don’t believe I’ll be watching a single second of it: #3 Virginia Cavaliers at Notre Dame Fighting Irish. No thank you.

Here’s the full rundown for everything on national television today! Enjoy.