Big East What To Watch: Week Six

Ah, finally, a week with no Monday games so we can relax a little bit. In fact, it’s a big week of relaxing in the Big East. It’s Finals Week at Marquette and apparently across a lot of the rest of the conference as well. There are just four men’s basketball games before 6pm Central time on Friday this week, all of them on Tuesday, and just six for the women’s basketball side of things…. and two of those are on Thursday night.

All told, that leaves us a little on the light side as far as highlights in the 30 total games on deck over the next six days. Let’s jump in, shall we?

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Tuesday, December 9: Seton Hall Pirates vs Columbia Lions (5pm Central, ESPN+) — Tony Bozzella’s team doesn’t have a legitimately good win on the board yet after going 1-2 in a very busy previous week, so a top 70 Lions squad at home is the second closest thing they’re going to get outside of Big East play.

Tuesday, December 9: RV Villanova Wildcats at #2 Michigan Wolverines (5:30pm Central, FS1) — Keeping Michigan under 100 will count as an accomplishment for Acaden Lewis and friends, as Michigan has hit triple digies, Rosa, in each of their last three games, all against high major competition….. well, kind of, in the case of Rutgers.

Tuesday, December 9: #5 Connecticut Huskies vs #18 Florida Gators (8pm Central, ESPN) — More on Dan Hurley being an absolute scheduling sicko in a moment. This one’s at Madison Square Garden as part of the Jimmy V Classic, and it’s the second game, so that time’s approximate.

Friday, December 12: #5 Connecticut Huskies vs Texas Longhorns (7pm Central, Fox) — See what I mean about Dan Hurley’s scheduling decisions? This is UConn’s sixth top 60 KenPom opponent in their last eight games….. and the first five are all in the top 20 as of Sunday night. This game at the building formerly known as the XL Center counts as slacking off for the Huskies. At least they’re not traveling much.

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Saturday, December 13: Seton Hall Pirates vs Auburn Tigers (12pm Central, ESPN+) — And here’s SHU’s last chance at a quality non-conference win. At least as of Sunday night, the Tigers are just a shade better than the Lions in the Torvik rankings. 2-0 at Walsh Gym this week would be big for the Pirates.

Saturday, December 13: Providence Friars at Butler Bulldogs (1pm Central, TNT) — Don’t think I didn’t see the first men’s basketball Big East conference game of the season sitting there on Saturday afternoon! This is BU’s follow up to losing by nine at home to Boise State, where as PC still doesn’t have a top 90 KenPom win this season.

Saturday, December 13: #1 Connecticut Huskies at #16 USC Trojans (4:30pm Central, Fox) — USC won, 72-70, out east in this matchup last year, but they got 25 points from JuJu Watkins, who is out for the year after a knee injury in the NCAA tournament. The Trojans clearly aren’t bad without her, but UConn might be a machine.

Saturday, December 15: RV Seton Hall Pirates vs Rutgers Scarlet Knights (7pm Central, FS1) — No, Rutgers is not good…. but the 9-1 Pirates might be with Shaheen Holloway guiding them to the #13 defense in the country right now per KenPom.com.

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Here’s the full Big East men’s basketball schedule for the week!

Here’s the full Big East women’s basketball schedule for the week!

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