Friday, July 17, 2009

Aggies To Play Jayhawks on Big Monday in 2010

Guys, start buttering up your signficant other now. Take her to a nice dinner on Feb. 13 or 14, because the Big 12 Conference announced Thursday that Texas A&M and Kansas will square off on ESPN's Big Monday on Feb. 15, the day after Valentine's Day.

The announcement marks the fourth consecutive year A&M will play at least one Big Monday game. This season's game will be a rematch of a Monday night game from this past January, when Kansas cruised to a 20 point victory. The Aggies other appearance on Big Monday last season was a 15 point drubbing of Texas at Reed Arena.

You can view the Big 12's entire Monday schedule by clicking HERE.

On a side note, I'm disappointed in the league's overall Big Monday rundown. ESPN might as well brand themselves the 'worldwide leader in Jayhawks and Longhorns basketball coverage.' Of the eight Big Monday, seven include either Kansas or Texas.

The schedule kicks off on Jan. 11 with the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State Bedlam game, but after that, every week includes either Kansas or Texas. Kansas even gets three in a row at one point (and four out of five weeks). The network must be particularly excited about Feb. 8 when Kansas plays at Texas. Maybe we'll even get to see SportsCenter live from the Erwin Center.

Here is the rundown of Big 12 teams on Big Monday:
Kansas - 4
Texas - 4
Oklahoma - 3
Oklahoma State - 2
Texas A&M - 1
Kansas State - 1

What do you think? Considering the Aggies have won a game in the NCAA Tournament in each of the last four seasons, should they be on Big Monday at least twice?

Friday, July 10, 2009

Interesting Story On Big 12 Basketball Scheduling

Big12Sports.com had an interesting feature on its web site Wednesday. Writer Wendell Barnhouse went behind-the-scenes to take a look at what goes into creating the conference schedules for all the men's basketball teams.

Unlike football, which sets its conference schedule years in advance, the schedule of basketball conference games aren't released until a few months prior to the season. As Barnhouse points out, the task is extremely arduous, with a computer program generating about 70 potential schedules at the outset of the process.

That might not seem like a lot, but when you consider each possibility includes 16 games for all 12 teams (a total of 192 games), i could see the entire conference staff going cross-eyed trying to review everything.

Other obstacles the schedulers have to work with are TV preferences, arena availability, each team getting four weekend home games and no more than two road games in the first four or last four games of the season.

CLICK HERE to check out the story.