Gavitt Games: Matchups announced, Hoyas take a hiatus

After two consecutive years that featured an exciting (if ultimately disappointing) early season matchup against the University of Maryland, Georgetown is taking a year off from the Big East-Big Ten contest. The pairings for the eight games series were announced this afternoon by Jon Rothstein at FanRag Sports, and it looks like Villanova will be the other conference team on hiatus. The Gavitt Tipoff Games are scheduled to continue through 2022, with each Big East team participating a minimum of 6 times.

Here is the slate for this fall:

• Nov. 13th: Minnesota @ Providence
• Nov. 14th: Purdue @ Marquette
• Nov. 15th: Butler @ Maryland / Creighton @ Northwestern / Indiana @ Seton Hall
• Nov. 16th: Xavier @ Wisconsin / Nebraska @ St. John’s
• Nov. 17th: DePaul @ Illinois

On paper, these are some of the better pairings we've seen so far. They do not take full advantage of geographical overlap, but the games have the potential to be genuinely competitive (unlike that Nova-Nebraska shellacking of 2015) and there are supplementary storylines to add interest.

The Blue Demons and Illini hail from the same state and both are looking to turn offseason acquisitions into real success. Creighton and Northwestern split their two most recent meetings back in the Dougie McBuckets era, but they haven’t met since the Bluejays made the switch out of the Missouri Valley Conference.

Games will be aired nationally on FS1 or ESPN, with the home team’s conference affiliation determining the network.