Your College Basketball Saturday Viewing Guide: January 23, 2021

13 games out of 32 on national television today feature at least one ranked team. That’s pretty great.

EIGHT of those 13 games have a ranked team on the road. Yes, yes, maybe road games aren’t quite road games with attendance restrictions in a pandemic. I get it. Still, traveling to a different gym is a change from shooting at the rims that you’re used to practicing on, so there’s always a chance of something weird happening. Just ask Iowa and Indiana from Thursday night about that.

The biggest game of the day looks to be #15 Ohio State visiting #10 Wisconsin. That’s the game with the two highest ranked teams facing off, just barely nudging #23 UConn at #11 Creighton out of the way. The Buckeyes seem to be the team in a little bit more of a need of a win here after they lost at home to Purdue back on Tuesday night. Wisconsin has won two in a row after losing on the road to Michigan (no shame there), and they’ve won four of the last five, too. Winning at the Kohl Center is never a picnic for the visitors, so Ohio State will be hard pressed to avoid their second straight loss.

Speaking of consecutive losses, Creighton finds themselves in a bit of a hole with the Huskies coming to town. The Bluejays have lost two straight and you wouldn’t think that a tippy top team like CU should be losing to Butler or Providence. That’s what has happened, though, and UConn makes their first trip to Omaha with an eye on avenging their overtime loss to the Bluejays in Storrs back in December. UConn is also trying to avoid a second straight loss after they got upset by St. John’s back on Monday night.

The Big 12 could be a conference of surprises today. #2 Baylor, #9 Kansas, and #14 West Virginia are all on the road today. The middle of the Big 12 standings are already a mess with five teams, including the Jayhawks and the ‘Eers, sitting on three losses. If the home teams pull out the wins (and Oklahoma is juuuuuust barely favored over Kansas), then things could get interesting very fast down that way. Keep an eye on it.

Here’s the full national television schedule for the day, or at least what the schedule was on Friday morning when I put it together. If you see something on streaming or otherwise not listed here that’s worth watching, pipe up in the comments so everyone can go check it out!