The Big East Has Released The 2021-22 Men’s Basketball Schedule Into The Wild

ARE YOU READY FOR THE MARQUETTE GOLDEN EAGLES MEN’S BASKETBALL BIG EAST SCHEDULE?

Well, good, because it was released on Thursday morning. All 20 delightful games, everything from the opener on the road against Xavier Musketeers on December 18th to Senior Night for the regular season finale against St. John’s on March 5th.

Here’s a few things that jumped out at me:

• Marquette’s Big East opener is the day after finals for fall semester end. Classes do not resume until January 18th, the day after MLK Day, which means that five of MU’s 10 Big East home games will happen during winter break: Connecticut, Creighton, Providence, DePaul, and Seton Hall. The SHU game is set for the Saturday before classes resume, so I imagine there will be a decent number of students back on campus by that point, but probably not everyone.
• There’s no television assignments or start times. My memory is that everything gets an assignment when the Big East schedule comes out, even the non-conference games. I’m guessing that the league office was holding back the schedule because Fox Sports was dragging their feet for some reason. The Big East schedule always comes out after Labor Day.... but as you can see it’s been a minute or 43 since then. UPDATE: It actually might be the fault of the NHL and the Olympics.
• Combining those last two items, the Seton Hall home game and the Xavier home game the following Sunday will be at the scheduling mercy of the NFL. The playoffs start with the Wild Card round on January 15th, and the Divisional Round will be going on when the Musketeers come to Milwaukee on January 23rd. It’s up to the NFL to decide how they’re arranging the playoff games on those weekends, so we’ll likely have to wait until week of to find out the start times.
• Saturday, March 5th is Senior Night with Kur Kuath and Darryl Morsell on tap to be honored as well as maybe Greg Elliott, too. It’s also Al’s Night, because the home game against St. John’s every year is Al’s Night since Al McGuire was a St. John’s grad. That would make Butler at home on Saturday, February 26th the most likely date for National Marquette Day if you’re so inclined to make your plans. The previous home date on a weekend is Xavier on Sunday, January 23, and generally speaking I don’t think that the university wants to have NMD compete with the NFL playoffs if they can avoid it. TV assignments may ultimately play a part here as there’s no point in having a national event if you’re not on national television that day.

That’s all I’ve got, particularly with no television information to work with at this time. The good news is that we’ll get a second blog post out of the television times and networks getting set down the road.

Here’s the whole schedule in delightful table format if you’re so inclined.