Second Year of Gavitt Tip-off Games Highlighted By Seton Hall-Iowa And St. John’s-Minnesota

(Photo by Catalina Fragoso – Double G Media)

Last year it was announced that the Big Ten and Big East conference would participate in the Gavitt Tipoff Games. Similar to the format of the Big Ten-ACC Challenge, The Gavitt Games showcased some of the best matchups in college basketball pitting teams from the top two basketball conferences in the country against one another. The parity between the conferences was shown last season as the inaugural year’s matchups yielded a 4-4 draw in the non-conference games.

Year 2 of the Gavitt Games was announced on Tuesday afternoon with the games scheduled to be played November 14-18 at on-campus sites for the home teams. Here are the matchups that were announced for the Gavitt Tipoff Games with games to be broadcast on Fox Sports 1 for Big East home teams and the Big Ten Network or the ESPN family of networks for Big Ten home teams:

Monday, Nov. 14

Villanova at Purdue

Tuesday, Nov. 15

Maryland at Georgetown (Rematch from last year, Maryland 75-71)

Wisconsin at Creighton

Wednesday, Nov. 16

Northwestern at Butler

Thursday, Nov. 17

Seton Hall at Iowa

Providence at Ohio State

Rutgers at DePaul

Friday, Nov. 18

St. John’s at Minnesota

The Gavitt Games comes on the heels of major successes for such Big East teams like National Champion Villanova and Seton Hall, who won the 2015 Big East Tournament. The Big Ten had their own success this past season as seven teams (Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue, and Wisconsin) were selected for the NCAA Tournament with three of those teams (Indiana, Maryland and Wisconsin) advancing to the Sweet Sixteen.

Scheduled through 2022, the Gavitt Tipoff Games will be played on consecutive days in the first full week of the college basketball season. The series, in its second year, will span eight years with games played at home sites. Each Big East team will participate a minimum of six times, while Big Ten programs will take part a minimum of four times. Teams from both conferences already meet in some traditional rivalry games, and those matchups will continue in the upcoming seasons.

The series is named after Dave Gavitt, the architect behind the creation of the original Big East in 1979. Originally just a basketball conference, Gavitt gave the Big East national appeal signing a TV deal with an upstart ESPN in the early 80’s and eventually creating the Big East network which showed games around the country. The former head coach for Providence for 10 seasons, Gavitt was the Big East commissioner from 1979-1990 until becoming CEO of the NBA’ s Boston Celtics.