Your College Basketball Saturday Viewing Guide: December 20, 2025

Feels like everyone ran away from the college football triple-header, doesn’t it

Apr 5, 2025; San Antonio, TX, USA; The Duke Blue Devils mascot before a semifinal of the men's Final Four of the 2025 NCAA Tournament at the Alamodome. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-Imagn Images

There’s just 16 nationally televised college basketball games today.

That’s not the total number of games, there’s 65 men’s games across the country and 85 women’s games. Most of it’s on a streaming platform, that’s all. That includes both of Marquette’s teams, by the way.

In fact, were it not for a big pile of “arranged by television networks” event games, there might not even be this much basketball on TV today. I presume that’s because everyone ran in fear of the planned tripleheader of College Football Playoff games that were scheduled long in advance for today. That’s also obviously eating up a lot of network time with ABC/ESPN carrying the first game and TNT carrying the last two. ESPN has to give their game the big treatment, but they’re kicking over to basketball after that wraps up. There’s also FCS playoffs and the Division 2 football title game. I get it.

Just kinda lonely out here for basketball reasons.

The biggest games of the day are the two women’s games that poke through to national television. This is the second year of Fox’s Champions Classic event, so we get #16 Louisville vs #17 Tennessee bright and early from Brooklyn, followed by #1 UConn vs #11 Iowa.

Over on the men’s side, there’s only two ranked vs ranked games, even though CBS tried very hard with the CBS Sports Classic. It’s not their fault that Kentucky and Ohio State have slipped. In any case, CBS still gets a ranked battle in #8 Houston vs #14 Arkansas at the Prudential Center in New Jersey, and then ESPN gets a good one at Madison Square Garden with #3 Duke facing #19 Texas Tech.

If you’re interested in tomfoolery — or perhaps literally Tom-foolery — may I point out Oakland vs #9 Michigan State at 11am Central on the Big Ten Network? Last year, Tom Izzo and Greg Kampe wore matching Grinch sweaters when they played right around the same time of the year. The hijinks continued to the postgame press conference when Kampe crashed Izzo’s chat with the media after MSU won 77-58. Who knows what these two have cooked up this time?

Here’s the full national television schedule for college basketball today! All times Central, of course.

Time (CT)GameTelevision
10:00 AM#16 Louisville vs #17 Tennessee (at Barclays Center)Fox
11:00 AMOakland at #9 Michigan StateBig Ten Network
11:30 AM#22 St. John’s vs Kentucky (in Atlanta)CBS
Liberty at DaytonUSA Network
12:30 PM#11 Iowa vs #1 UConn (at Barclays Center)Fox
1:00 PMColorado State at Utah StateCBS Sports Network
2:00 PMOhio State vs #12 North Carolina (in Atlanta)CBS
3:00 PMMemphis at Mississippi StateESPN
4:30 PM#8 Houston vs #14 Arkansas (in Newark)CBS
5:00 PMMaryland at #23 VirginiaESPN
5:00 PMBucknell at IowaBig Ten Network
7:00 PM#3 Duke vs #19 Texas Tech (at MSG)ESPN
Xavier at GeorgetownFS1
Stanford vs Colorado (in Phoenix)ESPNU
Penn at RutgersBig Ten Network
9:30 PMSan Diego State at-ish #1 Arizona (in Phoenix)ESPN2

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Category: General Sports