Men's basketball related scheduling items from the SEC, Big 12, ACC & Big Ten

Big 12

The Big 12 was the first of the Power 5 conferences to release the dates for all conference games and television details.  As you may be aware of by now, the Big 12 Network syndication has ended in favor of more games on ESPNU & ESPNEWS, but there is also an increase of Big 12 games that will appear on ESPN or ESPN2.  Last year 38 regular season games appeared on those two network and this year there will be 45.  Tack on five more games on ESPNU, twelve games on ESPNEWS and three games that could air on ESPNEWS or ESPNU, that accounts for 27 games moving from syndication to national cable.

I counted 99 regular season games as part of the Big 12 regular season national TV schedule in '13-'14 and 93 so far for '14-'15.  Note that several Big 12 schools have not released any television information for non-conference games, so there may be additional telecasts to tack on.

The Big 12 did not explicitly have an ESPN College Gameday game set aside for them, but a lot of the TV times were not set, just TV networks.  If I were to guess, I believe the following games are being looked at as possible College Gameday games: 1/17: Kansas at Iowa St. & 2/28: Texas at Kansas.

SEC

The SEC released its conference schedule Friday evening and the SEC Network will host 58 of the 126 conference games to be played.  The newly debuted network will have doubleheaders on Tuesdays & Wednesdays during conference play along with 2-3 games every Saturday.  For comparison purposes, last year the SEC syndication package carried 39 regular season games.  CSS and ESPN3 each carried nine conference games, so the network is nearly a direct replacement for those three packages.

Otherwise, the number of games per network comes close to mirroring the '13-'14 season.  On a regional basis, FSN will carry 13 games in conference play and that number matches last season.  Those games are all on Saturdays this year and will move over to the SEC Network next athletic year.  ESPNU will have 18 conference games and had 17 last year.  CBS has five games while it had six last year.  ESPN & ESPN2 carried 32 games last year.  They'll have 31 games this year.

The conference has one College Gameday appearance: February 7th when Kentucky visits Florida.

Other notes

* The ACC Big Monday schedule was released.   Note that the date skipped, January 12th, is the date of the FBS Playoff Championship game.

* With the release of the NBA schedule, you can tentatively pencil in North Carolina at Duke (I believe Duke hosts first this year) for February 18th.  This particular Wednesday is the only Wednesday that ESPN skips on their NBA telecast schedule in February.

* For the moment, it is likely safe to assume the return visit to Chapel Hill on March 7th ends up as the College Gameday game that evening.

* The Big Ten's Super Tuesday schedule was also released this week, along with the TV schedule for the ACC/Big Ten & Big 12/SEC challenge series.