Once again this year we’ve been inundated with requests for our annual release and analysis of ESPN’s Full Court Schedule, which for some reason the WWL makes very difficult to find and use every year.  You’d think that if they want us to pay $104 for this product, they’d make it considerably easier to know exactly what we were buying.  Alas.  Keep in mind that according to ESPN every one of these games is simulcast for free on ESPN3.com (previously ESPN360), so the decision point on whether to spend the hundy probably comes down to whether you enjoy watching games on a 15″ or a 50″ screen.  We didn’t want the length of this post to be a mile long, so we’ve thumbnailed the entire schedule (which we re-organized in a useful way) below.

Note: You’ll have to click the table in the new page to expand it to full size.

Click for Full Schedule

A fully sortable Google Doc that we created containing the same information is also located here.  You can sort the table by your favorite school or conference if you like, a feature that ESPN with its boring .pdf format simply doesn’t provide.

If that’s too much to look at, here are the twenty games that we find the most compelling on the package this year.  There are some legitimately good games on this list, including several matchups where talented mid-majors having something to prove visit a ranked team’s gym (i.e., Morehead State @ Florida; ORU and ODU @ Missouri;  Ohio @ Kansas).  Additionally, some of the conference matchups later in the year could turn out to be important games for the overall standings and in terms of NCAA Selection Committee seeding (i.e., Kentucky @ Georgia; Maryland @ Virginia Tech; UNC @ NC State).

Here are the schools with the most appearances on Full Court this year.  If you enjoy bad Big 12 basketball (Iowa State and Oklahoma), then you’re in luck, but the  package’s comprehensive coverage of the SEC’s Georgia (with probable first-rounders Trey Thompkins and Travis Leslie) and Mississippi State (with Renardo Sidney) should be interesting.  Seton Hall is on FC fourteen times, and given the amount of talent the Pirates are bringing back with the level-headed Kevin Willard entering the fray, it might be worth catching several more of their games.  And if you’re not getting enough of Jacob Pullen through the usual channels, the Full Court package will give you eleven more opportunities to fear the beard this season.

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The ESPN Full Court package schedule was released a few days ago, so we once again took the liberty of cleaning up the data and breaking things down for you.  The cost is $109 through your local cable/satellite provider, but they usually offer a $99 early-bird special if you sign up in November or thereabouts.  We’ve gotten the package at RTC for the past six seasons and there is a definite benefit if you follow a team or teams that aren’t on the standard national networks very often (whether due to a down year, or whatever).  It’s also very good if you one of those people who just cannot go without a Big East, Big 12 or SEC conference game this season – between the three conferences, almost 300 games will be shown.

Once again, we have to point out that there are no ESPNU games on this package, which makes it just short of impossible to watch some really good games for people in areas where the cable provider will not offer this channel.  Not that we’re bitter or anything.

Here are a few highlights of this year’s schedule:

• If you like Big 12 bottom-feeders, you’re in luck!  Colorado, Iowa State and Nebraska have 56 appearances combined over the course of the season.  We hope you like watching Craig Brackins and Cory Higgins.
• It’s not all garbage, though.  The best high-volume teams are K-State (16), UConn (14), Cincinnati (12) and Louisville (12).  Even top-ten teams West Virginia (10), Kansas (9), Texas (8), Kentucky (7), and Georgetown (7) have a good number of appearances.

• You won’t find a single Big Ten or Pac-10 game on this package.  Gotta get the Big Ten Network or the FSN Sports Pack for those.
• Middie Love – one of the best features of this package annually is to get an occasional peek at mid-major leagues.  We’re always clamoring for more, but we’ll take what we can get.  There are a bunch of games involving mid-majors as the visiting team (see the entire list after the jump), but there are also 136 games where a mid-major team hosts.  The WAC has the most (24), but there are twelve leagues represented.  Here’s the list of middies:

Our favorite 30 games from the ESPN Full Court Package this year are:

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And now, with your RTC public service announcement…

ESPN Full Court will be FREE, as in zero dollars, for the week of Jan. 12-17, as part of a promotional teaser to inspire you to buy the second half of the season for the low, low price of $75*. 

Here are a few of the nationally prominent games featured this week that you shouldn’t miss because they’re free (the full schedule is here):

• Tues 1/13 – Kansas St. @ Kansas
• Wed 1/14 – Wake Forest @ BC
• Sat 1/17 – Arkansas @ Florida
• Sat 1/17 – Syracuse @ UConn
• Sat 1/17 – Wake Forest @ Clemson (possible battle of unbeatens)
• Sat 1/17 – South Carolina @ Tennessee

Check your local cable or dish provider for the channel listing and times.

* – actually not that low of a price

For those of your who haven’t been spending as much time on Rush the Court the past few months as you should (looking at myself in the mirror), we thought we would offer you a quick guide to what we have been working on over the past few months.

General Overview: Some top quality writing/prognosticating to get you in the spirit for the run from today until the early morning hours of April 7th, 2009.
– Finally, It’s Here: New RTC feature columnist John Stevens offers his thoughts about the upcoming season.
– A Little Preseason Bracketology: RTC co-editor (Do we even have titles?) rtmsf does his best Joe Lunardi impression and makes a surprising pick for his national champion. I’m smelling an attempt to make the RTC preseason bracketology championship the new Madden cover.
– Vegas Odds – Preseason Check-In: For the degenerate gamblers out there, RTC co-founder rtmsf offers an analysis of the Las Vegas odds for the 2009 NCAA champions for pure academic purposes. . .
– Preseason Polls Released: The surprisingly employed (I’m running out of titles here) rtmsf analyzes the AP and Coaches polls going into the season with a deeper look at unanimous #1 UNC’s early schedule.
– ESPN Full Court: 562 Games of Gooey, Delicious Goodness*: Once again, rtmsf comes through with the entire ESPN Full Court schedule with a Steve Nash-style assist from Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball.

Big Early Season News: While there are several big stories going into this season, there were 2 major stories that have come out recently that you should know about before you start watching games.
– Tyler Hansbrough Out Indefinitely: Who? Oh yeah, that guy. Everybody’s favorite for national POY and NBA Draft Day snub (get ready for the annual Dick Vitale rant) Psycho T will be out for a while, but we think the Tar Heels will be ok by March.
– Jai Lucas Leaving Florida: In a story that isn’t getting nearly the attention that the Psycho T story has (for good reason), Billy Donovan has lost last season’s starting point guard on the eve of the new season. While it appears that Lucas was probably heading towards a role as a backup point guard on the Gators, the timing of this announcement is surprising. It will be interesting to see what the Gators will do if freshman guard Erving Walker struggles in adjusting to SEC basketball.

Conference Primers: As part of our attempt to make a new-and-improved RTC, we hired the finest journalists in America to make our site more all-inclusive of the little people in the college basketball landscape. To that end we put together 31 conference previews (31 automatic bids to the Big Dance means 31 previews from RTC) with the help of the aforementioned correspondents.
– ACC
– America East
– Atlantic 10
– Atlantic Sun
– Big 12
– Big East
– Big Sky
– Big South
– Big Ten
– Big West
– Colonial
– Conference USA
– Horizon
– Ivy League
– MAAC
– MAC
– MEAC
– Missouri Valley
– Mountain West
– Northeast
– Ohio Valley Conference
– Pac-10
– Patriot League
– SEC
– Southern
– Southland
– Summit
– Sun Belt
– SWAC
– WAC
– West Coast Conference

As the season progresses, we will have more features and content including updates from all 31 conferences. We hope all of you are looking forward to the new season as much as we are and even if your team looks like it will struggle to make it to the NIT, remember the words of Kevin Garnett, who incidentally didn’t play a minute of college basketball (that’s another post), “Anything is possible!”

11.08.07

How’s that for a debut? We mentioned last night that we were anxious to see how the debut of Oklahoma 6’10 freshman Blake Griffin would go, and it’s safe to say that it went fetchingly. How does 18 pts (4 flushes), 13 rebs, 2 assts in 29 mins of play sound? Oh, and Oklahoma 71, San Francisco 55. Needless to say (OU was involved, after all), neither team shot the ball worth a damn from outside (6-37 combined). We weren’t really sure what to think of Jeff Capel’s Sooners this year because they just seemed so… average… last year, but with a serious post presence like Griffin now on board, we may need to rethink where we place them in the Big 12 this year.

Connecticut 82, Buffalo 57. UConn had a much easier time tonight even though this was a second round game in the CvC. Buffalo really isn’t a good team, and UConn made that apparent mid-first half when they ran off a 17-0 run to take control of the game. AJ Price finally came out of his shell to hit for 24/3/3 assts/3 stls, while teammate Stanley Robinson had a monstrous game (10/13/6 blks). Most importantly, the Husky defense was equally as good as last night, holding Buffalo to 33% shooting for the night. UConn will meet upstart Gardner-Webb at MSG next Thursday night in the semis of the CvC.

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On Tap Tonight (all times EST). For all intents, tonight is opening night. There are 93 games on the slate, including four ESPN Full Court games and two Fox College Sports games, which means we’ll finally get to evaluate some teams live. Here are some of the games to watch for.

• Saint Louis (NL) v. NC A&T 4:30pm – this should be a competitive first game for Majerus.
  
• Georgia Tech (-17 ) v. UNC-Greensboro 6pm – upset alert if Ga Tech doesn’t come ready to play.
  
• Villanova (NL) v. Stony Brook (FCSP) 7pm – how many times will Scottie Reynolds shoot – we have the o/u at 18.
• George Mason (NL) v. Vermont 7pm – how is this excellent mid-major duel not on Full Court?
• Ohio (-3 ) v. New Mexico St. (ESPN FC) 7pm – the first of Ohio’s nine FC appearances.
  
• Tennessee (-17.5) v. Temple (ESPN FC) 7:30pm – we’re excited to see how Tyler Smith fits into Pearl’s system.
• Alabama (NL ) v. Troy (ESPN FC) 8pm – w/o Steele, we just can’t get excited about Bama.
• Florida (NL) v. North Dakota St. (ESPN FC) 8pm – NDSU is no patsy – we’ll be watching to see the nation’s #1 recruiting class.
• Cincinnati (-8 ) v. Belmont 8pm – upset alert again – UC was horrid last year. Have they improved?
• Kansas (-26.5) v. Louisiana-Monroe (ESPN FC) 9pm – Will the KU of Oral Roberts fame or last Feb/March show up?
• Washington St. (-25.5 ) v. Eastern Washington (FCSP) 9:30pm – a late tilt to see if Tony Bennett still has his magic.
  
• UCLA (-23.5 ) v. Portland St. 10:30pm – how will the Bruins start the season?
  

The official start of the 2007-08 regular season isn’t until Friday, but the NCAA exempted the annual Coaches vs. Cancer Tournament, which is starting tonight in Memphis and will run throughout the week at several other sites (Storrs, Lexington, Norman) before holding the championship rounds at MSG next week. ESPN and Comcast have ensured that we won’t be able to see any of this week’s games in our local viewing area – thanks, guys! But jeez, this seems really early – we just changed our clocks for chrissakes. Mike DeCourcy has the best take on the matter:

Once again, instead of the triumphant introduction to the season we have in such sports as NFL football and Major League Baseball, college basketball just sort of stumbles in and grabs a seat in the corner.

With college football and the NFL in full swing, it’ll take until Thanksgiving for anyone to notice that we’re already playing games, but that’s ok. It gives us a chance to bone up on early hits and misses (ahem, Michigan St.) while nobody’s watching.

Here’s the CvC bracket:

A few comments:

• Quick Rant. Why the hell aren’t ESPNU games part of the Full Court Package? That makes completely no sense to us as it seems a natural fit. And yes we’re extremely annoyed that Comcast will not offer ESPNU in our area.
• Predictions. Memphis will roll through its regional, keeping the nation’s longest homecourt winning streak (32) alive. Kentucky will bomb Central Arkansas but struggle with Alabama A&M and shotblocker extraordinaire Mickell Gladness in the second round. UConn will get a game from Todd Bozeman’s Morgan St. squad before faltering, then destroy Buffalo in round two. Our possible upset alert is USF over Oklahoma. The Dons probably don’t have enough to pull it off, but we expect a close game there. Still, we expect Jeff Capel’s OU team to represent the Norman region at MSG next week.
• Quick Fact. Kentucky is 0-2 in this event, with both losses coming in 2000 (UCLA, St. John’s) when it was a four-team tourney. Grab the ball, Tayshaun! That record will change this time around.

If you’re a college hoops junkie like us (and you must be if you’re reading this blog), you’ve probably considered the above question. We’ve purchased the $99 ESPN Full Court package for the last four years running and we plan on doing so again this year. Over the years, we’ve spent countless hours on the phone with Comcast (so you want the NBA League Pass, right?) and searching the espn.com website (as of this morning, we still couldn’t find a list on there) to try to find a complete list of all the games that the Full Court Package was going to have, most of the time to no avail.

Now that we have a little more experience with finding this list, we thought it’d make sense to provide it to you guys so you can make an educated decision as to whether you want to throw some bones toward the rapacious bastards your cable company. Whether you should purchase the 427-game FCP depends completely on the following factors:

1) if you’re unemployed how much free time you have

2) if the MSM hates your team how often your favorite team(s) or conference(s) are shown on the package

3) if you live in a hole whether you live outside the local area from said team/conference

Here are a few tidbits about this year’s FCP:

• Missouri has the most games on the FCP with 22 – here are some of the other high-volume notables:
  • 16 – Arkansas, Texas Tech
  • 15 – Oklahoma, Seton Hall
  • 14 – UConn, Iowa St., Kansas, Louisville, LSU
  • 13 – Alabama, Marquette, St. John’s, Texas
  • 12 – New Mexico St., South Carolina
  • 11 – Kentucky, Miami (FL), Nevada, Oklahoma St., Ole Miss, Providence, Rutgers, South Florida, West Virginia
  • 10- Florida, Mississippi St., Pittsburgh, Tennessee

• There will be 115 nonconference games on the FCP this year, most of them obviously occurring prior to Jan. 1. Some of the best of the list are:
  • Texas Tech @ Sam Houston St. (11.14.07)
  • Clemson @ Mississippi St (11.15.07)
  • BYU @ Louisville (11.23.07)
  • Nevada @ UNLV (11.24.07)
  • Boston U. @ Pittsburgh (11.27.07)
  • Missouri @ Arkansas (11.28.07)
  • Oral Roberts @ Texas (12.18.07)
  • Washington @ LSU (12.29.07)
  • Xavier @ Auburn (01.06.08)
  • Georgia Tech @ Georgia (01.09.08)

• The remaining games are conference games, and the BCS leagues are well-represented. Here’s the rundown there (notice anyone missing, Big Ten fans??):
  • Big East – 69
  • SEC – 63
  • Big 12 – 56
  • ACC – 36
  • WAC – 34
  • MAAC – 12
  • Big Sky – 10
  • Colonial – 10
  • America East – 9
  • Pac-10 – 8
  • Missouri Valley – 2
  • Northeast – 2
  • Southland – 1

• Hey, we’re on board with watching more WAC and Colonial games than another depressing slugfest between Minnesota and Wisconsin. Still, we would have liked to have seen a little more of The Valley and Colonial, but it’s better than last year, and we’re hopeful it will continue to improve.

• Best conference matchups:
  • Pittsburgh @ Villanova (01.06.08)
  • Vermont @ Albany (01.06.08)
  • Texas @ Missouri (01.12.08)
  • Notre Dame @ Georgetown (01.19.08)
  • George Mason @ UNC-Wilmington (01.26.08)
  • Vanderbilt @ Florida (01.27.08)
  • Tennessee @ Mississippi St. (02.02.08)
  • Nevada @ Utah St. (02.02.08)
  • USC @ Washington St. (02.09.08)
  • Boston U. @ Vermont (02.14.08)
  • Stanford @ Arizona (02.16.08)
  • Oklahoma @ Texas (02.23.08)
  • Tennessee @ Florida (03.05.08)

Here’s the complete list.