The Baylor Bears and Gonzaga Bulldogs face off in a thrilling season opener on November 4th, setting the stage for an electrifying college basketball season. This top-10 matchup at Spokane Arena promises intense competition, despite TV scheduling challenges with Monday Night Football. Explore the Big Ten conference's newly released schedule, featuring the addition of UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington. Key matchups include Indiana vs. Purdue, Michigan vs. Michigan State, and Rutgers at Ohio State, showcasing star freshmen Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper. Discover how teams navigate West Coast travel and the strategic implications of these changes. Join us as we discuss the excitement surrounding the upcoming season, with insights into team strategies and player performances. Don't miss this opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of college basketball's evolving landscape. Listen now for exclusive analysis and previews of what's to come.
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[MUSIC PLAYING] It's the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Five-hour energy shots give you the feeling of alertness and energy you need to get in the zone and get things done. With zero sugar, a convenient portable size, and coming in several flavors like watermelon, tropical burst, or my personal favorite grape, it's exactly what you need to get through the day. Head to five-hourenergy.com, the set number five-hourenergy.com, and use our code locked on CFB to receive 20% off your order. This offer is only valid until September 30th on one order and cannot be used with other promotions. The code is not good on subscription orders. Go to five-hourenergy.com today. Drew and few have gift wrapped an opening night bundle of joy for all of us, a top 10 matchup to kick off the season. [MUSIC PLAYING] You are locked on College Basketball, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Hey there, what's up? Welcome into the Lockdown College Basketball Podcast, the only daily national college hoop show out there. We're your host, this lovely gentleman to my side is Mr. Andy Patton and I'm Isaac Shade, and you're joining us at the place to get your college basketball content every single day. Thanks for making us your first listen or watch. We want to remind you that you can get every episode ad-free on our good friends at Amazon Music. Special shout out also to all the every day is joining us and all the members of the Lockdown College Basketball Discord. Welcome in folks, we're glad you're here. This episode is brought to you by Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account, and use code locked on college for $20 off your first purchase. Going to be a fun Monday show today. A big reason it's fun is because my friend, it's your birthday. Andy Patton is 34 years young today, folks. Make sure you reach out to him on Twitter or wherever and shoot him some birthday. Love Andy, I hope you eat a beautiful with a nice red glass of wine or something awesome and enjoy that. Man, going to be good, so happy for you and glad another year of your life. Way to go, mom, pop Patton. Yomming up on the show today, folks, as I said, off the top. Baylor and Gonzaga are indeed kicking off the season for us. We love these coaches. We love how they love each other. And boy, have they hooked us all up. So we'll unpack the game and what it means for college basketball and opening night. Plus, the Big Ten schedule came out late last week. Looks like they're trying to take over the entire calendar year 2025. Plus, what's everything look like in this conference schedule now that we have the four West Coast teams? We're going to unpack all of that for you. So Andy, why don't you kick us off, get us into the news and the details about this great probable we don't have the preseason poll yet, top 10 matchup between the Baylor Bears and the Gonzaga Bulldogs. - Well, I'll tell you what, first of all, if it's not a top 10 matchup, then the pollsters are definitely off about somebody here because I don't know these are both top five teams, necessarily, but I think there's an argument that they're both top five teams and it would be very surprising if they weren't both top 10 teams. - Yeah, it was great to see this game come together. We'd heard rumors about it for a really long time. We'd heard rumors that they were trying to play the first week of the season, but we didn't know the exact date. We'd heard rumors that the game was going to be in Las Vegas as a neutral site, which felt kind of very normal for both these teams. We've seen them play neutral site games in the past. We saw them play at the Samford Pentagon a few years ago. So it's pretty, not surprising to see these two teams square off against each other again. Like you said, Mark, few Scott drew our friends. They've played against each other for a long time, but they've had a lot of assistant coaches and staff members. So it's not surprising to see these two teams link up again. And we'd actually heard for a while the rumor that this game was going to be on November 6th, the first Wednesday of the season, and that it was going to be played in Mexico City. I had spoken on "Unlocked on Zags" with Rocco Miller about this, and that was the rumor they were trying to make that happen. We know the Big 12 has been interested in trying to kind of create more of a market in Mexico City. So Baylor wanting to play down there, Gonzaga being willing to play them. It all kind of made sense. But unfortunately, things fell apart in that conversation. They weren't able to get it done. I think finding a venue in Las Vegas at that short notice was something that they weren't able to get together. So we decided to play this game at the Spokane Arena on November 4th, the first day of the season. Isaac, you and I have talked so many times about the lack of marquee games on the first day of the season. We're so happy to finally see that happen. I think the first episode you and I ever did together. It was on opening day two years ago, and that was the first segment of the first episode of "Locked on College Basketball." If you have been a listener since day one, you've heard this conversation before. We've talked about it, and so it's so nice to not be able to need to have that conversation for another year. This is gonna be a fantastic matchup between, again, two potential likely top 10 teams squaring off on the first day of the season. - And it's great because this year, not only that, but we have another matchup that's probably top 25, if not top 30 and 35, whatever. As you said, the polls, who knows what happens. But we get Texas, Ohio State, actually, in Las Vegas at T-Mobile Arena. Maybe part of the reason that Argan Zaga Baylor games not there, but there's some other decent games as well. Texas A&M, a true road game at UCF, South Florida, against Florida, that would have probably been a better game last year. But still, we get a couple of Andy that are gonna be exciting. Now, Andy, as we start to dig into the minutiae of this game, the TV side of it's kind of weird. Because of the way that media agreements are played out, I saw your eyebrows there as I said, the Wii. ESPN has first write of refusal because this is a game in a state played by a WCC member. But guess what? This is on a Monday night, and that interferes with Monday night football. And oh, by the way, it just so happens to be the Bucks at the two-time back-to-back national champions and Patrick Mahomes and the world's most famous girlfriend in Swift. So obviously, it's not gonna be on ESPN. Oh, how about ESPN too? Well, guess what? I looked at the Manning cast schedule. Of course, they're gonna have a Manning cast, again, for the Bucks at the Chiefs and Taylor Swift and all of that. So that's a no-go as well. So Andy, I started trying to think, what are the options for the TV here? Maybe ESPNU, but that just feels like a weird relegation to me for that. I mean, I guess if you gotta do it, you gotta do it. I also thought about the possibility of after Monday night footballs over. Again, this is in Pacific time. So you could go on ESPN, but oops, you got SVP. And of course, you know that's bad beats on Monday night. We can't be going without that. So maybe it's on ESPNU, post-Monday night football, or a third option I had thought about. It's just that ESPN has first right of refusal. So maybe they refuse and it ultimately goes to another network. Those are the three I've thought about. And so Andy, I don't know. I'll be interested to see what happens there with TV side of it. - Yeah, me too. It's one of those things that it's frustrating that the season starts competing with Monday night football. Like we've had two years worth of complaints about there not being any marquee games. And now when we finally get marquee match-ups, they're having to compete. 'Cause again, it's the best case scenario for Gonzaga Baylor that this game ends up on CBS or some other network competing against Monday night football. - That doesn't seem like a good scenario in terms of generating the kind of viewership that you want to get there. But then again, so is putting this game on ESPNU with an 8.30 p.m. Pacific time tip where Baylor fans are forced to watch this thing. Baylor fans in Waco camp, they asked them till 10.30 to watch the start of this game. Like that doesn't feel-- - On a school night. - On election season. - Feeling like a good option either. And obviously moving it to Tuesday is not a good option. That's election day. That's not a good day to have any basketball games going on. But it kind of speaks to a larger issue of why is college basketball so insistent on starting the season on a Monday? It's not like Monday's a big day in college basketball throughout the regular season. Monday's one of the slowest days typically. You get big Monday starting in January, but I don't see why the season is, I get why they're not starting on a Sunday or a Saturday. They don't want to compete with college football or the NFL, but just go Tuesday. Just start on a Tuesday and then an election year start on a Wednesday. It seems like there's no real reason to force this season to start on a Monday because then you have situations like this where late in the off season, a really fun marquee matchup shows up in ESPN. Now they got some hand-ringing going on to figure out how the heck are we going to make this work? Are we going to force these two teams to start super late? Maybe that's why they agreed to play it at the arena. Maybe that's part of the deal there is playing it in Spokane on the West Coast. Makes it a little bit more palatable to play a game starting super late. That's kind of my best guess is they're playing the game there in part in order to be able to have the game on ESPN starting at like 8.30. But if that's the best case. - 8.30 just to specify. - Yeah, if that's the best that they can do to get this game, then that's not great. That's not great from a TV perspective. - Also speaking of the location, Andy, we always chuckle about these kind of things. This being at Spokane Arena similar to like Kentucky coming to play, you know, in Spokane. Jeff Goodman tweeted about this and said, quote, Drew will play a true road game. Come on. On the first day of the season against a preseason top 10 team end quote. Andy, I literally put in our show notes, a face palm emoji. This is not a true road game. This is not at the kennel. And I understand like it makes sense to not unless we're going to have a couple of true things. Plus Andy, while you and I talk about all the time we would prefer to have these games on campus, what this is going to allow in this day and age is NIL opportunities for these teams. And look, that frankly is a new wrinkle in these types of events. And so I think while we love these on campus games, I do think that we want to continue to think of player empowerment and capability to make these dollars. And so I'm becoming more sympathetic to these games in the NIL era. Speaking of these games, Andy, the good news is that it sounds like, also from Goodman's reporting on the positive side of it, that the two have agreed to play each other each of the next two seasons as well at neutral sites. So Andy, I'm thinking maybe that one of those would be closer to Waco since this is close to, or is it literally in Spokane? And that the other would probably be a true neutral somewhere. Yeah, it's going to be, you're going to have one game in Spokane, you're going to have one game in probably Dallas, and you're going to have one game in an actual neutral site. I'm wondering if they're going to try to do Mexico City again, or if they're going to settle on Vegas. Maybe they'll go back to the San frat Pentagon. I'm not sure what exactly they're going to look to do there. But again, the trust these two coaches have to be like, OK, our original plan for this game didn't work, so Scott Drew says, fine, I'm willing to go play you in Spokane, because I know that we'll get a game closer to our home in a couple of years. And that's what kind of bugged me about Goodman's tweet is like, he's trying to compliment Scott Drew. And Scott Drew deserves to be complimented for this. He's willing to go play a pseudo road game on the first day of the season. That should be complimented, but you don't have to call it a road game when it's not. You don't have to specify true road game when that's not what it is. Like, you don't have to use incorrect language to emphasize your point. It's just not necessary. This is a phenomenal thing that Scott Drew and Baylor is willing to do to go play a really good team with a ton of roster continuity on the first day of the season when you have three or maybe four new starters. Scott Drew deserves a lot of love for that. Doesn't make it a true road game. No, doesn't make it a true road game. And I don't like that that is the way that that is being sold because that's not the case. Well, hopefully the other two iterations of this will also kick off the season. Amy, that'd be great. And the Pentagon, was that where it was supposed to be the year that it got coveted like day of? Yeah, yeah. And then yeah, they ended up playing there the following year. So they have played there before, but yeah, it was supposed to be the year before that. We're going to transition away from talking about Scott Drew, Mark Few in the first day of the season to talk about the big 10 because their schedule is finally out. We've been talking about how long it has been taking these teams or these conferences to put together their full non-comp Earth conference schedules and reveal them. The big 10 schedule is out on Thursday. It appears the conference is trying to take over the first couple of months of the year 2025. We're going to talk more about that in just a second. The first folks, let's talk about today's sponsor, Fandall. And at Bell fans, you can start the season with a big return on FanDuel America's number one sportsbook. When you get a hunch in the middle of a game, you can check out the latest stats, view live play-by-play, and so much more, all on the same page where you placed your bets. And you get started with $200 in bonus bets guaranteed when you placed your first $5 bet. If you're thinking 2025 National Championship, those two teams, Baylor and Gonzaga, both right now have the fourth tied for the fourth best odds to win that national championship plus 2,000 right now. So if that appeals to you, go ahead, drop that $5. You get $200 in bonus bets guaranteed. That's at fanduel.com. All right, Isaac, moving away from our conversation about the opening day of the season in that epic Gonzaga Baylor matchup to talk about the big 10. Because on Thursday, we finally got the actual matchups that we're going to see in the dates for the big 10 conference schedule. We already knew the matchups. Now we have the dates. It's a 20 game schedule. Each team will play three teams at home and away. Each team will then play seven teams just on the road and seven teams at home. That's how it's working with the big 10. Again, we're going to get tip times. We're going to get TV deals. All that stuff's going to show up later. Part of the reason that this schedule looks a little bit different is, of course, because the big 10 added four new schools, the 24, 25 season, the four West Coast schools in Washington and Oregon, as well as your Southern California schools in UCLA and USC, the first games of the big 10 conference slate will be on December 3rd again. As we've seen with a couple other conferences, particularly these extra bloated conferences, you see some early conference games. And then usually they play a few more non-conference games and then you get back into the actual full conference slate starting usually the very end of December or the start of the new year. The first games that we're going to see on that Tuesday, December 3rd, Northwestern at Iowa, Washington at UCLA and then Michigan at Wisconsin. So we're going to see a bunch of games, 18 total games between between December 3rd and December 13th. So we actually are seeing a pretty good amount of big 10 scheduling starting kind of earlier in the season. Every team is going to play two times in that span once at home and once on the road. So a lot of different big 10 action taking place a little bit earlier this year. But Isaac, I want to kind of talk about not the December portion of the schedule, but what happens when we get into January? Because you made a really keen observation when putting together some of the notes for the big 10 schedule of they want to make sure they're visible every single day that they can be once the basketball season gets fully underway. Andy, this was so crazy. Here I was this weekend just sitting and looking through the schedule a little more in depth. And I was like, well, that's interesting. There's a game on January 2nd and 3rd and 4th, 5th, 6th. Holy smokes. And we know like the big 10 has been the conference that's played on more days of the week, right? Like for a while now, we've been getting a Friday night matchup every now and again, which I love. Like college basketball should own Friday night. We get more Sunday matchups in the big 10 and things like that. But now the big 10's going all in, Andy. And so what I realized is that from New Year's Day through the last day of the regular season, which is Sunday, March 9th, there were only four calendar days in that span with no big 10 games. That's New Year's Day. The main chunk of the conference schedule starts on Thursday, January 2nd, and then three straight Mondays, February 3rd, 10th, and 17th. Other than those four days, we will have at least one 10 basketball game every other day. That is absolutely insane. So that means like Tuesday, February 18th through Sunday, March 9th. There's one game every day, Thursday, January 2nd, through Sunday, February 2nd. There is at least one big 10 game every single day. Andy, that's crazy. My hunch is that a lot of it has to do with accommodating the travel schedules and getting teams from West to East Coast. But I'm fine with that because it means we get great conference basketball every day of the week. You know, you had been talking about how bereft of games we typically are on a Monday, not necessarily so, because that big Monday is always one big 12 and one ACC game, usually flip-flopped that order. But now we're going to get some big 10 as well. The issue though, Andy, is I start-- one con in this for me as I started looking at it perdue, which last couple years has been the taste of the town when it comes to the big 10, only has two Saturday games in their schedule. I don't love that because Saturday is like marquee college basketball. And so that is one of the drawbacks is that it's spreading out the days when these teams compete. But all in all, I think I really like this. Yeah, me too. I think it's fun to be able to-- for the big 10, you're just continuing to make sure that there's eyes on your games every single day of the week. Basically people are like, oh, what am I going to do on Wednesday? There's no-- and my NBA team's not playing whatever it may be. Like, you're going to have some kind of game to watch. You're going to have some-- maybe it's Northwestern at Rutgers. I know Rutgers is kind of good this year. But like, maybe it's not the most exciting matchup that you typically get. But like, there's going to be some kind of big 10 basketball basically every single day from January to early March. And that's objectively a good thing. Yes, do you wish Purdue got more marquee games? Perhaps. But again, the big 10 is they have to kind of guess a little bit in terms of which games they think are going to be more viewed than others and try to put them in the right spots, while also accommodating the travel schedules, especially with the West Coast trips. And I think that's the most intriguing part of this new schedule for the big 10 is how they're trying to handle the fact that you have four schools very separate from the rest of the teams in the conference. There's not really travel partners in the way that we traditionally think of travel partners. But we do see that like, when USC travels out, they're going to try to hit two games in the same trip. You know, they're going to Northwestern on February 4. And they're going to Purdue on February 7. For example, other examples would be like Oregon's going to Michigan on February 5. And Michigan State on February 8. Like, those are the obvious types of scheduling things that just make sense. Like, why there's no reason to not do this in a way that is as convenient for Oregon as possible. And then of course, the same thing with the East Coast or the non-West Coast teams, I guess, going out West. Like Iowa goes to USC on the 14th of January. And then they go to UCLA on the 17th Wisconsin goes to USC on the 18th. They go to UCLA on the 21st, et cetera, et cetera. You look for the schedule, you're going to continue to see that the majority of the trips are like that. And they're not forcing all of the Big Ten teams to go to all four West Coast schools. In fact, none of the original Big Ten schools are making a trip to California and a trip to Oregon and Washington. None of them also get all four of them at home. It's all split up. And I think that that is probably the most logical way to do it. And assuming the Big Ten stays at 18 schools, it's probably going to continue to be that way. So an example would be a team is either going to get Washington and Oregon at home and go to USC and UCLA, or the flip side. They're going to go to Washington and Oregon, and they're going to play USC and UCLA at home. In order to make that work, all of the new schools, the four West Coast schools, they're home and away games. Because remember, every Big Ten school gets three opponents that are both home and away. For the new schools, it's just each other. UCLA plays USC at home and away. Oregon plays Washington, home and away, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that that makes sense, but my curiosity-- and we talked about this right before we hit record-- Isaac was, if that's going to continue to be the plan, because it makes sense in year one, as these teams get used to what this travel looks like and just see how it goes. But what if five years from now, or 10 years from now, or whatever, there's a reality. And this has been a reality for many of the last couple of decades where UCLA is really good, and USC is not. And Oregon is not. And Washington is not. And then UCLA is getting a schedule where they get six of their Big Ten games or against three teams that aren't very good. If I'm Indiana or Purdue or whatever, I'm not super happy that UCLA just routinely gets a schedule that ends up easier. Obviously, the flip side could be true. All four of those teams are four of the seven best teams in the Big Ten, and then all of a sudden, they're not going to be super happy that they're playing each other. So that's just something I'm curious about. Obviously, we don't know if the Big Ten plans to continue doing it this way. It makes sense logistically, but it might not make sense from a competitive perspective. And I'm curious when the rubber hits the road in that regard. Like, for example, Andy, the ACC, they do the same thing with three teams that you play home and away in a 20-game schedule, I mean, it's the exact same as the Big Ten. But two of those partners are always the same. And one is variable year and year out. And so yeah, I'm very curious to see what happens with that. But I'm right with you. I think that for now, in year one of this, this is the most notable way to approach it, both from like a travel standpoint and all that. And the weird thing, of course, about it is literally the landscape of this entire thing could be different next season or two seasons from now. And so it's just really hard to know with what we're going to be looking at. But I think the Big Ten has done, as a conference, has scheduled this in a really smart way. You know, you're talking about you can basically plan on having it any night of the week. So I just, while you were talking, I was like, man, I wonder what I'm going to do on Valentine's Day. So I looked, Valentine's is a Friday night. We got UCLA at Indiana on Friday night, Valentine's Day. Look, I'm all in. Let's do it. - Do you have any more romantic out there than Mick Cronin? - No, heck no. That man is so sexy, Andy, let's get after it. Okay, now we want to continue talking about the Big Ten, but look specifically at some of the games. Can Indiana, the Hoosiers, show Purdue that they are not only the class of the Big Ten, but maybe the state of Indiana finally, move over Sycamores, we're coming for ya. And how's Rutgers gonna look in early conference action with their two stud freshmen? We're gonna discuss these matchups and more coming up in just a second. Right after I tell you about game time, look, going to live events, it really is absolutely the best music, theater, comedy. And finally, obviously college football is back, but six weeks from today, we will have college basketball. And obviously Andy and I and I know you are looking forward to making brand new memories this college basketball season. Well, great news. When you're getting tickets for this year, game time has a new feature called game time picks. That makes getting tickets for your favorite live events even easier. Game time picks filters out the fluff to show you only incredible deals on great seats so you don't have to keep wading through all the muck. So whether it's game time ticket coverage, the lowest price guarantee, or the panoramic views from your seat that you can find in the app game time has got you covered. And honestly, you don't even have to wait six weeks because Purdue is going to Creighton for a charity exhibition on October 26. That's just over a month from now at the CHI Health Center in Omaha there. You can get Andy, row four, just behind the Creighton bench for $38 each. That's incredible. Or if you don't want to spend quite that much, you can get in the door for $19. That's the cheapest ticket I found. Great stuff. So take the guesswork out of buying tickets with game time. Download the app, create an account, and use code locked on college for $20 off your first purchase. That means they have to pay you a dollar. I think Andy, if you get that $19 ticket, no, that's not how that works. I'm joking. Again, create an account and redeem code locked on college for $20 off terms apply. Download the game time app today. What time is it? Game time. Andy, obviously, as you mentioned earlier, we've had the conference pairings for a while. It's just very nice to now know what order they're in and where they are and day and all of that kind of stuff. Andy, I'll start and then I'll kick it to you with one that really jumped out at me. Indiana has not been all that great lately. In fact, they have not owned the state that has the same name as their mascot, the Hoosiers. It's time for them to step up and start taking that back. Also, Mike Woodson would appreciate that so that his job stays intact and they're going to have two opportunities to do that with the other Big Ten team in their state. IU at Purdue and Mackey on January 31st and then Purdue comes to Bloomington on February 23rd. Spread out just a little bit. I kind of like that. So if Indiana really wants to prove, hey, look, not only can we get back on top of our state, but also the Big Ten in the post Zach Edie era, it's got to do it in these two games. They must hold serve particularly at home, but man, if they want to really make waves, both at the conference level and nationally, doing that at Mackey on January 31st, would be massive for Mike Woodson's retooled club who brought in a lot in the transfer portal, Andy. So I'm going to be watching both of those games keenly. - Yeah, I think it's a nice advantage for Indiana to play Purdue as late in the season as they are, just because they're a roster that has so much newcomers, so much multiple new transfers who are expected to start, I think probably, at least for sure, three new starters this year. So not getting Purdue until basically February with that January 31st game, I think is a nice, I'd be happy to see that if I was Mike Woodson. And if I'm Matt Payne and Purdue, this is a pretty tough schedule for them. I think, I mean, you're talking about a road trip in January that's really pretty brutal. They're going coast to coast and just over a week span, they go on the road to take on Rutgers on January 9th. They come back home to play Nebraska on the 12th, just three days later, and then three days after that, they're going all the way out to Seattle to play Washington on the 15th of January, and then three days later again, they're playing Oregon down in Eugene on the 18th. So they're going to be at Rutgers on the 9th and at Oregon on the 18th with two games in the middle. That is a really tough stretch. I'm going to kind of really test the medal for this Purdue team again. Matt Payneers' clubs are always tough. They're always tenacious. This is a roster that has a ton of continuity despite losing a key player, of course, in Zach Edie. I think this is a team that's going to be very, very good with their guards, Braden Smith and Fletcher lawyer. So I'm excited to see how this team looks and this particular stretch here in January is going to really give us a lot of information about the Boilermakers and how ready they are to once again be a significant player in the Big Ten and in the NCAA tournament. - Andy, something I'm looking at is that Eric Musselman is breathing a sigh of relief about the travel at the end of the schedule. I feel like if I was one of the West Coast for some, I wish we could brand that like the West Coast. - No, we need a name for them. - Yeah, we should really come up with that. - Big Ten West, I guess. - Yeah, I don't know, it's going to be fun. Folks, help us brand this. Give us your best nicknames for the West Coast for quartet of the Big Ten. Anyway, I would really want my travel or my stay home in chunks. And so what's really interesting for me is I was looking at USC schedule, is they actually close with the three game stretch against the other three West Coast teams. They go to Oregon on March 1st, host Washington on March 5th and then go to UCLA just down the road on March 8th to kind of close out their regular season. And so I feel like you're looking at that and you're like, man, those first 17 games and obviously they've got three other games against this trio 'cause they're all playing each other home and away. But that means then that your travels all mixed together, but really you're just staying West Coast at the end of the season. And I think that's not something you really talk to your team about like, hey guys, it's going to be great in these last three games. But I think as a coaching staff, it's like, ooh, that's a nice way to end. - Yeah, you're feeling the strain of traveling so much throughout the year. So knowing that you got that, not nearly as long of a trip up to Oregon and then obviously a much shorter trip to UCLA to close out the year. And again, same kind of thing that we were talking about within the end of USC. I mean, it completely new roster. So I'm not thrilled if I'm Oregon or UCLA that I'm playing what is likely a USC team that is a little bit more rested towards the end of the year because they're not traveling as much in those last few games. And a team that's probably gelled a lot more now than they will have in January or December when the first big 10 game starts. So that's a bit of an advantage for USC and maybe not a great thing for Oregon and UCLA who I think are gonna be contending towards the top of the conference. And another game that I really wanted to highlight here is Rutgers at Ohio State. This game is on December 7th, one of the first conference games in the entire big 10, certainly for these teams. And it's really gonna be a good opportunity to figure out what the heck the Scarlet Knights have here in these two superstar freshmen, Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper. We expect Ohio State to be a good team as we talked about at the top. We think this is a potential top 25 team for the Buckeyes with new coach Jake Deebler taking over for Chris Holtman. And so I think if this is a top 25 team by the time this game rolls around, Rutgers assuming they do okay. And their non-comprutes is also gonna be a top 25 team. So this is a really good opportunity. The first big 10 game for Rutgers to go on the road, to take on Ohio State, I think it's gonna be a great opportunity to see what these two young kids can do. I think there's gonna be a lot of must watch games on the Rutgers schedule more than they've been in a really long time for this program, but this is definitely one to circle if you're excited. If you're a Rutgers fan, a big 10 fan, a college basketball fan or an NBA draft fan, definitely wanna watch this game. I think it's gonna be a lot of excitement in that one. - Andy, I'm gonna skip ahead to Michigan and Michigan State we love. Obviously you would expect those to be a partnership. And what I love is that we get both of their games, the game at Michigan and at Michigan State in the span of 16 days at the very end of the schedule. So they play in Ann Arbor at Michigan on Friday. Again, we, I really love these Friday big games, man. On Friday, February 21st, that's the Friday after Valentine's Day. And then last day of the regular season at Michigan State on Sunday, March 9th. And you know, Andy, I do see a world in which either of both of these teams are gonna be right at the top in the mix there when we don't have, at least on paper, a dominant team like Purdue last year. And so will that be a game that's gonna determine some things, particularly that last one on the last day of the regular season, that will determine seating or maybe even, I don't know, a regular season champ, it could be a thing, Andy. We'll watch out for that. - That's what the big 10 is absolutely hoping for is that that Sunday game between Michigan and Michigan State has a significant ramification on the standings in the conference because that's gonna be a huge game either way, but certainly if it has any kind of implication outside of just the rivalry for that matchup. But Isaac, that's gonna wrap it up for us today here. Fantastic show, always fun to talk, scheduling once we finally get a look at these schedules. And excited of course for this Baylor Gonzaga game, which is coming up in about six weeks, so excited for basketball to be on the way back. Folks, we got more team previews coming your way this week. We got some fun guests lined up to get through some of those. We're also gonna continue our conference preview series as well. We'll check out for that and more coming your way this week as we get into the end of September, the start of October, which is when we really start to feel like basketball season is here upon us. Folks, thank you so much for listening. As always, apologies to the lawyer family, talked about Purdue a little bit today. Let's go Wildcats, not sure Northwestern's a big player in the big 10th, but hey, we never know. And until Tuesday, peace out. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - A prime member. You can listen to this lockdown podcast ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. (upbeat music)
