Some early indications of ESPN Networks Men's Basketball Schedule for November

One of the nice things that ESPN does is publish out listings far in advance through their portal.  It helps me with the game predictions that I do weekly during the college football season and while they don't have the exact games listed, it can provide a glimpse into the early season college basketball schedule.

I'm not going to go through the various early season events that are already in place and you can find some games that have already been scheduled at my site.

ESPN

Sunday 11/14 - ESPN's schedule starts with the Champions Classic doubleheader on the opening night, November 9th, but they jump in with a doubleheader a few days later, currently listed as a SEC game at 1pm ET and a Pac-12 game at 3pm ET.  

What games are likely?  I think the SEC game is Florida State at Florida.  I'm less certain about the Pac-12 game unless a game is moved from another date as the currently released schedules don't have a game for that date.

Tuesday 11/16 - Another doubleheader is listed, this time as American (8pm ET) and Pac-12 (10pm).  We know the PK Invitational game between BYU and Oregon is already set for 10pm on ESPN, so what is the American's game?  I believe that will be Virginia at Houston which is scheduled for that day.

ESPN2

Tuesday 11/9 - A Big Ten game is listed at 6pm and there's nothing that stands out.  When all else fails - Akron at Ohio State.

Saturday 11/13 - A Pac-12 game is listed at 11:30pm ET and I can't figure out what it is unless the game is mislabeled as a Pac-12 game.  There's a WCC game, Texas at Gonzaga, that I could certainly see being the chosen game.

Sunday 11/14 - An ACC game is listed at 5pm ET as a lead-in to the Asheville Invitational Championship.  Neither game currently scheduled for that day screams "TELEVISE ME!", but if I had to guess, I'd choose Drexel at Syracuse over Fairfield at Boston College.

ESPNU

For ESPNU, I'm going to go with more of a highlights and oddities theme.

1. An ACC game at 6pm on Tuesday 11/9 seems like a place to open the Hubert Davis era at UNC as they host Loyola (MD) that night.
2. A Big 12 game is scheduled for 8:30pm ET on 11/12.  Pitt at West Virginia makes sense.
3. There's an ASun game at 4pm on 11/16.  Just so happens that USC is visiting Florida Gulf Coast that day.  Why?  USC coach Andy Enfield came from FGCU and their run as "Dunk City".

ESPN+ (maybe?)

There's a handful of games that don't seem to be earmarked for a place, particularly with college football taking up valuable space on Saturdays.  Those games include:

Georgia at Cincinnati (11/13)

USC at Temple (11/13)

Stanford at Baylor (11/20)

Oklahoma at UCF (11/27)

There also might be games that end up on other networks, such as Villanova's visit to UCLA on Friday 11/12.  Hopefully we'll start to get clarity in the upcoming two weeks.