Your College Basketball Saturday Viewing Guide: January 15, 2022

34 games of delightful college basketball decorate and dot the landscape today. Why, you ask? Well, part of it is definitely because ESPN tricked the NFL into putting a playoff game on Monday night. As such, they’re not broadcasting a playoff game today, so that’s not wasting at least 5 hours of broadcast time on The World Wide Leader. There’s also the NBC/Universal contract with the Atlantic 10 kicking in, and so there’s three games on USA today since NBC Sports Network is no longer A Thing.

You know what is a thing, though? ESPNU wasting broadcast air on replaying Thursday night’s Oregon State/USC game AND THEN ALSO the college football national championship game. Yep. 11am to 4pm on ESPNU, wasted away on things that already happened. I’m pretty sure there’s basketball teams out there that would love to be on ESPNU today, and yet, they’re not.

Say, for example, #2 Gonzaga visiting Santa Clara. Or #21 Texas at #15 Iowa State. Or Utah at #6 Arizona. Or Oregon State at #3 UCLA.

Nope, too bad, nerds.

Anyway, we do get six top 25 teams on the road on national TV today, which is fun. Only one of those is ending up against a ranked foe, and that is #22 Tennessee Volunteers at #18 Kentucky Wildcats. That’s your headline game of the day. Down in the evening hours, we get #11 Houston going on the road to Tulsa and #4 Auburn Tigers going to visit Ole Miss Rebels. For you night owls, keep an eye on Oregon Ducks at #5 USC Trojans, since the Ducks are fresh off an upset of #3 UCLA on Thursday night.

There are metric tons of games available only on streaming — that Texas/Iowa State game, for example — so if you catch something that’s really great, go holler in the comments for everyone else to go find it.

Here’s the full national TV rundown for the day! All times Central, of course.