Your College Basketball Saturday Viewing Guide: December 28, 2019

Sweet merciful crap, today’s schedule of college basketball games sucks out loud.

Your primary problem here is that ESPN has turned over ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU to College Football Playoff Game programming after 3pm in the afternoon. They’re doing alternative angle/commentary/whatever you want to call it on ESPN2 and ESPNU, so there’s 12-ish hours of broadcast windows — roughly six games worth of space — that’s getting thrown straight in the trash. To make matters worse, ESPNU is just running The Worldwide Leader’s pretaped College Football 150th anniversary packages for a few hours before the games, so we can’t even get some space for hoops there. That’s a tragedy. I’m not really sure why ACC Network or SEC Network aren’t counter-programming the football games with basketball, but hey, it’s all ESPN TV, technically speaking, so there’s your answer, fishbulb.

So what we’re left with is a schedule of 11 nationally televised games, and one of them is Creighton playing a non-Division 1 team. Yay.

Speaking of Creighton, I promised you an official rundown of today’s games nearly two weeks ago, because today is the only day this week with Big East games. Here’s the whole list, and please keep in mind that all times are Central and all channels are FS1.

11am: Georgetown vs American University
1pm: Marquette vs Central Arkansas
3pm: #12 Butler vs Louisiana Monroe
5pm: Creighton vs Midland University Warriors

Enjoy as you see fit. To give you an idea of what we’ve got going on here, Georgetown is the least favored team in this arrangement, as KenPom gives them a 95% chance to beat American.

Obviously, the big game of the day is Louisville visiting Kentucky. Not only is it a rivalry game in the Commonwealth, but both teams are ranked, and we have the added bonus of #3 going on the road against #19. It’s actually going to be tipping off right before the college football playoff games start, so feel free to keep your eyes on the hoops primarily.

Here’s the full rundown for the day in nationally televised college basketball. Please enjoy responsibly.