IRVING, Tex. — The Big 12 Conference has announced its schedule on ESPN’s Big Monday platform for the 2015 conference season, highlighting a slate that will include more than 100 games on the ESPN networks.
The Big 12 is the only one of its peer conferences to play a full double round-robin schedule in basketball in order to determine one true champion. The league sent a nation’s-best seven teams to the NCAA Tournament a year ago and was rated as the No. 1 conference in the country in the RPI during the regular season. Seven teams were nationally-ranked a year ago (more than any conference), with seven rated in the various early national top 25 polls that have already been released for the 2014-15 campaign.
The continuation of the long-standing and popular arrangement with ESPN will tip off on Monday, January 5 with Oklahoma facing Texas in the first game of this year’s Red River Showdown on either ESPN or ESPN2. Big Monday will then take a one week hiatus as ESPN airs the College Football Playoff title game.
The Sooners will then travel to Kansas two weeks later to take on the Jayhawks on January 19. UT wraps up the January slate by traveling to Iowa State on January 26.
The month of February starts with one of the top matchups from last season as ISU will head to Lawrence for a game with KU. The Cyclones are also on the road the following Monday, traveling to Norman to play OU. The Jayhawks will then be in Morgantown to play West Virginia on February 16, a contest the Mountaineers won a year ago.
One of the matchups in the annual Sunflower State Showdown will be showcased on February 23 as Kansas plays at K-State. The final Big Monday game will feature a unique twist this year, as ESPN will have a “flex pick” between Baylor at Texas and Oklahoma at Iowa State. The network and the Conference will determine in the weeks leading up to the game which contest will be part of the Big Monday schedule, with the other game slated for ESPNU.