It’s a 20 game round robin, starting at home vs Butler on December 18 & concluding at home vs St. John’s on March 8.
It’s been after Labor Day for nearly two full weeks, but FINALLY on Thursday afternoon, YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles announced the Big East men’s basketball schedule.
As it has been since the addition of UConn to the league, it is a 20 game round robin schedule. Everyone plays everyone else twice, once at home and once on the road. Let’s drop the schedule into the chat here and then we’ll talk about what jumps out at me.
Some takeaways:
- No, you do not see tip times or television assignments on that schedule. The league elected to release the schedule without those as opposed to waiting for the details to be finalized, it seems. You won’t hear me complain, as that means I get to write a second blog post when they do announce that stuff.
- Marquette never goes more than two consecutive games home or away the entire season.
- Marquette will not start Big East play until after the beginning of Winter Break. As such, the students will not be on campus for home games against Butler, Creighton, and Georgetown.
- Marquette will be at Providence on New Year’s Eve. That’s a Tuesday this year, so there’s at least some question about when that game will start since it is still a workday for many people. However, there are three Big East games scheduled for that day, and it wouldn’t be impossible or odd for Fox or FS1 to run a tripleheader of games that day. I’m curious about the start time, because, well, the AMP could be very amped due to consumption of beverages, depending on the timing.
- The athletic department has already marked the final game of the regular season — home against St. John’s — as Al’s Night. Not surprising, as that’s always the add-on for the home game against the Red Storm since legendary MU head coach Al McGuire was a STJ graduate.
- Marquette usually veers away from making Senior Night National Marquette Day as well, so that means NMD is probably not against the Johnnies. The next previous weekend home game…… is Saturday, February 1 against UConn. The only other real option is Saturday, January 18 against Xavier, which will be the first home game after the students return to campus for spring semester.
- Marquette will finish their season series with Butler on January 28th before they play UConn or St. John’s once.
- Continuing the theme: MU will wrap up both games against Xavier on January 18th before playing UConn, St. John’s, Seton Hall, or Villanova once.
- Marquette’s breaks in the schedule are positioned pretty nicely. They will have a week off between games on January 7th (vs Georgetown) and January 14th (at DePaul), and then have the same gap between February 11th (vs DePaul) and February 18th (vs Seton Hall).
- The home game against Xavier on January 18th matches up with a date on the NFL playoff schedule. Don’t expect a set in stone start time on that until much closer into the season, and it is possible that Fox will pin that game to a playoff game broadcast.
What did I miss? I know there’s at least one or two things that are jumping out to you that I didn’t catch. Fire off in the comments what you like and what you don’t like.