I told you to expect it. Listen to me now, believe me later on…..
You know what we forgot to talk about when the Big East announced the television coverage schedule for men’s basketball back on October 2nd?
Whip-Around coverage of the opening night of the season.
And there it is in the press release, waaaaaaay down there in paragraph #9:
For the fourth straight year, FOX Sports will provide blanket coverage of the action of the opening night of the season. On November 4, the BIG EAST Opening Night Tip-Off will include live look-ins on FS1 of eight non-conference contests. Full game coverage for all eight games will be available on the FOX Sports App.
I told you it was coming. When I realized that seven of the nine official non-conference schedules that had been released had opening night games, it was only a matter of making it official. About a month after I pointed it out, the Big East and Fox Sports made it official.
Here’s the timed out schedule for Monday, November 4th, with all times Central:
5:30pm: St. John’s vs Fordham
5:45pm: Butler vs Missouri State
6pm: Providence vs Central Connecticut
6:30pm: Seton Hall vs Saint Peter’s
6:30pm: Xavier vs Texas Southern
7pm: DePaul vs Southern Indiana
7pm: Villanova vs Lafayette
7:30pm: Marquette vs Stony Brook
Here’s the good news for you, the distinguished and attractive Marquette Golden Eagles fan: Marquette is the last game to start. In theory, that means that there’s the best chance of FS1 just showing the end of the MU game as it will probably be the last game on the air. The St. John’s game should be wrapping up by the time MU starts, so that’s one less game to compete for Whip-Around space. MU’s game against Stony Brook also starts 30 minutes after everyone else, so that’s 30 minutes for every game to get completely out of hand and thus give FS1 a reason to go to MU for tipoff and stay there for a good long while.
Better that than tipping off at the same time as another game, which is what’s happening to not just Seton Hall and Xavier, but also DePaul and Villanova. Suckers.
As always, every single game is available to be streamed in its entirety on the Fox Sports app. If you’ve got a cable subscription and a fancy smart TV, just get signed into the app and use that. It’s as easy as can be.
It could be worse. We could be Georgetown or Creighton. They elected to start the season on Wednesday instead, and they got stuck together in a doubleheader on FS2.