This year, the definition of “The Big East men’s basketball schedule is release at some point after Labor Day” is literally one week after Labor Day, as the conference announced the league slate for all 11 men’s basketball teams on Monday morning.
It is, for now, just the schedule of games, only the dates the contests will be played. The TV assignments and start times will be announced later, and honestly? That gives us a chance to publish a SECOND BLOG about the schedule, and that’s fine by me. It also means we do not have start times or television assignments for any of Marquette’s non-conference games. We’ve already written about that schedule over here.
Is there anything interesting about the schedule in the official Big East press release? Nope, it’s just noting the dates where there’s a maximum of five games scheduled and things like that. Anything useful in the Marquette press release? Nope, other than a note that National Marquette Day is still up in the air officially. With that in mind, let’s drop in the table version of the schedule and then point out things of interest…
| Date | Opponent |
|---|---|
| Saturday, December 19 | Xavier |
| Wednesday, December 23 | at Butler |
| Thursday, December 31 | at Creighton |
| Tuesday, January 5 | Providence |
| Saturday, January 9 | at Villanova |
| Tuesday, January 12 | at UConn |
| Saturday, January 16 | DePaul |
| Wednesday, January 20 | Creighton |
| Saturday, January 23 | at Xavier |
| Wednesday, January 27 | at Seton Hall |
| Saturday, January 30 | Butler |
| Tuesday, February 2 | St. John’s |
| Saturday, February 6 | Georgetown |
| Wednesday, February 10 | at Providence |
| Wednesday, February 17 | at St. John’s |
| Saturday, February 20 | UConn |
| Tuesday, February 23 | Seton Hall |
| Friday, February 26 | Villanova |
| Tuesday, March 2 | at Georgetown |
| Saturday, March 6 | at DePaul |
Things that stood out to me:
- As for the National Marquette Day thing, the guideline is “last weekend home game that’s not Senior Day.” Senior Day will be Friday, February 26, against Villanova, so we don’t have to worry about that. The last weekend home game is Saturday, February 20th against UConn. That’s your most likely candidate, but keep in mind that 1) we need the TV schedule to work with us and 2) Marquette is going to do a full fledged 1977 National Championship Anniversary Day somewhere in here. If for some reason, the UConn game lands on Peacock, then that’s not going to be National Marquette Day because making people organize watch parties all around the country with the added level of “who’s got a Peacock login” is not going to cut it. Keep an eye on February 6th against Georgetown and January 30th against Butler, just in case.
- Finals Week for Fall Semester wraps up on December 19th, while Spring Semester starts on January 19th. It is not ideal to have the home Big East opener on the day that the students have to be out of the residence halls by noon, but that’s what we’ve got. At least the upperclassmen don’t have to be anywhere, I guess? The only home game that’s completely contained inside Winter Break is the Providence game. The DePaul game on January 16th is riiiiiight on the edge, the Saturday before classes start, and we’ll see — once we get a TV schedule! — if Athletics can convince Res Life to have the halls open for the students to return on the 16th.
- To put that part another way: Marquette will play four of their first six Big East games on the road. By pure math, that means 8 home games and 6 road games the rest of the way, and more specifically, six of the final 10 are at home.
- The schedule is games in bunches, by the way. Every single road game in league play is part of two straight road games. As a result of that combination, only those first two home games are not a part of games at Fiserv in a row, and once we hit January 30, Marquette has two sets of three straight home games. The first one is three games in eight days, and the other is three games in seven days. Wild!
- The gaps in the schedule come up with seven days off for Christmas and six days off in February. Other than that, Marquette is playing pretty much every three or four days.
- Marquette will play both games against Xavier and Creighton before they play Seton Hall or St. John’s for the first time this season. They get Butler both times before they get the Johnnies for the first time. Does this mean anything in particular? Probably not.
- Marquette is visiting Creighton for New Year’s Eve. They went to Providence in 2024, Villanova in 2022, hosted Creighton on New Year’s Day in 2021, went to Creighton on NYD in 2019, St. John’s on NYD in 2018, Seton Hall on NYD in 2016, DePaul for NYE in 2014, and Creighton in 2013. Four Creighton games out of nine around the first of the year in 14 seasons is weird, right?
Okay, I’m clearly out of interesting things to talk about here. Anything jump out at you that I didn’t get to? Let me know in the comments!
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