Let’s set the buffet table, shall we?
In a year when the NFL has never been less enjoyable to watch (that’s not fact, but it’s a widely-shared opinion), consider making this upcoming Saturday your big sports day and then using your Sunday as the errand day when you do all the Christmas shopping and take care of all the business you need to tend to so that the coming week is a relatively peaceful and manageable one.
Sure — if you’re a fan of an NFL team that’s right on the cusp of doing something big (and the opponent is a decent one), fine — reserve Sunday for a few hours. However, if you don’t have a dog in the NFL hunt and you must choose between Saturday and Sunday as your last big pre-holiday dive into the sports world, make it Saturday.
The bowl season begins with a five-game stack, and naturally, the BYU-Utah Holy War revival will command a considerable amount of attention. However, college basketball explodes with its biggest single day in December and the most important national contests since the high-end portions of the Big Ten-ACC Challenge (Maryland-North Carolina, Louisville-Michigan State).
*
What do you have to look forward to on Saturday in college basketball?
* Utah-Duke in New York (noon Eastern time, ESPN)
* Georgia Tech-Georgia (Georgia Tech isn’t horrible this season — noon, SEC Network)
* Wichita State-Seton Hall (noon)
* Villanova at Virginia (noon, ESPN2)
* North Carolina-UCLA in Brooklyn (1 Eastern, CBS)
* Indiana-Notre Dame in Indianapolis (2 Eastern, ESPN2)
* Kentucky-Ohio State in Brooklyn (approx. 3:30, CBS)
* Colorado State-Kansas State (4 Eastern, ESPN3)
* Cincinnati-VCU (4, CBS Sports Network)
* Butler-Purdue in Indianapolis (5 Eastern, Big Ten Network)
* North Carolina State-Missouri (6 Eastern, SEC Network)
* Northern Iowa-Iowa State in Des Moines (7 Eastern, ESPNU)
* Oklahoma State-Florida in Sunrise, Florida (8 Eastern, Fox Sports 1)
* Baylor at Texas A&M (9 Eastern, ESPNU)
* UNLV-Arizona (9:30, ESPN2)
* Tulsa-Oregon State (11 Eastern, Pac-12 Network)
* Tennessee-Gonzaga in Seattle (11, ESPNU)
* Texas at Stanford (11:30, ESPN2)
In college football, few teams play ambitious out-of-conference games. In college basketball, the nature of the beast is such that teams are given more incentives to play tough opponents. We can see the fruit of this reality on Saturday, in a schedule which has interesting games from start to finish, over a span of nearly 14 hours.
___
One more note is needed to put this Saturday in context: The following Saturday, Dec. 26, is almost entirely barren. It’s very odd for college basketball to go nearly dark on a Saturday at any point during the season. The obvious reason this year is that Christmas Day falls on a Friday. As much as television and money make young players travel across the country in a professionalized environment, Christmas Day has still put the brakes on travel and game play. The sport did not want players in an airport on Christmas Day.
The only game on the Dec. 26 schedule is one played in both teams’ backyards: the Louisville-Kentucky feud.
Given the lack of weekend basketball just after Christmas, and given the arrival of bowl season, you’re not going to get too much publicity about college basketball from Dec. 20 through Jan. 1. Not until Saturday, Jan. 2 (when college football failed to stage the playoff semifinals, basically ceding the afternoon to hoops) will you see college basketball regain the sports spotlight.
This Saturday is a final time to assess where various teams stand before conference competition begins in the final few days of December.
