Merry Christmas, you get (almost) no basketball.
There are eight Big East basketball games this week. Eight total between men’s and women’s basketball. There are no basketball games at all until Saturday. I guess you’ll just have to enjoy [checks notes] spending time with your family at Christmas between now and then?
Even the games that we are getting this week are not lighting the world on fire in terms of obvious importance and interest. BartTorvik.com has all three men’s teams in action — all against buy game opponents, all at home — as 20+ point favorites. With that said, seeing as two of the teams in question are Georgetown and DePaul…. don’t screw this up, guys.
Two of the women’s basketball games this week have 20+ point projected margins from BartTorvik.com as well…. and that includes Providence visiting UConn.
The other three are intriguing at this point of the calendar.
Saturday, December 28: Creighton Bluejays at St. John’s Red Storm (1pm Central, Fox) — The Bluejays had an eight game winning streak snapped in horrific fashion when they got beaten with a stick by #1 UCLA on Friday. 70-41 was the final, and the Bruins were up big pretty much from the jump. St. John’s had started the year 10-1 with a very awkward “why did we play this” mid-day start on Thanksgiving Day turning into a home loss to Harvard. That was their only misstep of the season, and they had started to put some nice wins together….. up until they lost by 14 on the road against Villanova to open Big East play. So both teams are in need of a pick me up victory here. And it’s on national TV, too!
Sunday, December 29: Seton Hall Pirates at Butler Bulldogs (1pm Central, FloSports) — You could easily handwave away Butler’s first three losses of the season. All against either teams we knew were good or teams that have proven to be rising up so far this season. Right up until they lost for the fourth time, falling 66-43 to a DePaul team that’s still under .500 after that W. The Pirates have won the games they were supposed to win and lost the games they were not favored to win. Nothing wrong with that, but we don’t really have a quality vibe check on Tony Bozzella’s team quite yet. We’ll get one here.
Sunday, December 29: Marquette Golden Eagles at DePaul Blue Demons (1pm Central, FloSports) — Yes, DePaul’s 6-8 as of this writing, but they’re 1-0 in the Big East because they beat Butler as mentioned a minute ago. Jill Pizzotti has had a rough time as interim head coach because this was a crazy tough schedule for the Blue Demons, and they’ve pretty much put themselves out of a postseason discussion because of the losses. Maybe that means 17 more Big East games playing spoiler to everyone’s season, and I think Marquette would like to avoid taking on a loss to open Big East play…. because they get UConn in their second league game.
Here’s the entire men’s basketball schedule for the week. Yes, it’s three games.
Here’s the entire women’s basketball schedule for the week. Yes, it’s five games.