It’s been on the schedule for a couple of years and was merely folded into the new initiative between the Big 12 Conference and the BIG EAST.
Still, next season’s KU-Villanova game in Philadelphia will be the headliner in the inaugural Big 12-BIG EAST battle, which will take place in December, with specific dates and times to be announced later.
The Big 12 Conference revealed the matchups for the rest of the challenge, which will feature all 10 Big 12 teams facing the top 10 teams in the BIG EAST, in the same way the Big 12 and SEC wage their challenge every season.
The matchups were jointly determined and include four games that were previously scheduled.
According to a release announcing the pairings, the home school will have the right to determine the venue of its game, with broadcast rights of the games being determined by the home team in conjunction with the national television rights agreement in place for each conference.
The Big 12 television rights are controlled by ESPN and the BIG EAST’s men’s basketball television rights are controlled by FOX Sports.
The two conferences have signed a 4-year agreement, which will run through the 2022-23 season, with an equal number of games played in each conference’s home market each year.
The 2019-20 KU-Villanova matchup, slated to take place at Wells Fargo Center in Phily, is the second leg of a home-and-home series between the two college basketball powerhouses. Kansas won the first matchup this past season, 74-71, in a rematch of the 2018 Final Four battle and a meeting of two nationally ranked teams at Allen Fieldhouse.
Because that game was not part of the challenge, it’s conceivable that Villanova and Kansas could face off one more time in the second edition of the deal between the Big 12 and the BIG EAST. But no future matchups have been set at this time.
Here’s a look at the rest of the head-to-head games on tap for the 2019-20 season:
**2019-20 Big 12/BIG EAST Scheduling Alliance Matchups**
Butler at Baylor
Seton Hall at Iowa State
Kansa at Villanova^
Marquette at Kansas State^
Oklahoma at Creighton^
Georgetown at Oklahoma State
Xavier at TCU
Texas at Providence^
Texas Tech at DePaul
West Virginia at St John’s
*^ = Pre-existing matchups*
