Your College Basketball Saturday Viewing Guide: December 17, 2022

Thanks to the start of college football bowl season, ESPN Prime’s broadcasting space is all taken up today. That’s why there are only 23 college basketball games on national television today, and all 23 are men’s games to boot.

With that said, there are some pretty notable games on the rundown today. There are FIVE games between two ranked opponents on deck. The only downside to this is that three of them are starting hourly at 11am Central, Noon, and 1pm today. The good part is we can just keep moving from game to game if one of them turns out to be not a thrill ride, and worst case scenario, we get to just skip from the end of #14 Indiana at #8 Kansas to the second half of #4 Alabama/#15 Gonzaga on a neutral-ish floor in Birmingham to the second half of #5 Houston visiting #2 Virginia, and that gets us all the way past 3pm. That’s not terrible.

The other two ranked on ranked games are #16 UCLA and #13 Kentucky facing off in the CBS Sports Classic at Madison Square Garden, and then in the very last game of the day, #6 Tennessee heading out to the desert to tangle with #9 Arizona. Just with those five, that’s a pretty good day of basketball, even if there isn’t a metric ton of it readily available.

There’s also #3 Connecticut as the only ranked team on the road against an unranked team today. They’ll put their undefeated record on the line in their Big East opener at Hinkle Fieldhouse against Butler, and that one is at 6pm Central on FS1. Should be a whole thing, and that’s neat.

While there’s only 23 games on national television, there is a TON of basketball on ESPN3 and ESPN+, so if you catch a good one, say something in the comments so everyone else can tune in as needed.

Here’s the full national television schedule!