Xavier releases 2019-20 men’s basketball schedule

With just 61 days until Xavier tips off the season with a home game against Jacksonville State, the full Musketeers schedule has been released. With thanks to Tom Eiser’s press release, here are some details on the road ahead for our boys.

The four game home stand to open the season - against Jacksonville State, Siena, Missouri, and Missouri State - is the longest of the campaign. Counting the exhibition game against Indianapolis, X will play 18 games in the friendly confines over the course of the season. The longest home stand of the Big East schedule carries the first three games of January, when X will host St. John’s, Seton Hall, and Creighton.

The Crosstown Shootout is at Cintas at 5pm on Saturday, December 7th. It will be broadcast live on FS1 in its entirety and not get preempted by other content or pushed to some internet-only back channel that you have to explain to your dad how to find as he gets increasingly frustrated.

Three times on the year Xavier will play back-to-back road games in the conference: February 1 and 4 at Seton Hall and DePaul, February 12 and 17 at Butler and St. John’s (in MSG), and March 1 and 4 at Georgetown and Providence. The Big East schedule is fairly kind to Xavier in terms of big road trips. At Nova is Monday, December 30th, when students will be out of town, at Creighton is a 4pm Sunday tip on January 26th, and at Butler is at 6:30pm on Wednesday, February 12. Even the Seton Hall game is at 11am on a Saturday (February 1), which can be a tricky tip time for home teams and crowds.

Meanwhile, home games are stacked with great times to defend Cintas. Creighton is 2pm on Saturday, January 11 with FOX national, Villanova is 2:30pm on Saturday, February 22 on FOX National, and Butler is Senior Night at 8:30pm on FS1 on Saturday, March 7th.

Now some tidbits cut right from the release:

Xavier has 29 of its 31 regular season games confirmed for television broadcasts but all 31 are expected to be televised. The Dec. 14 game at Wake Forest and the Dec. 22 game at TCU still need to be finalized but are expected to be shown on national or regional television networks, which would give Xavier every regular season game on television again this season. Xavier has four games on FOX National, 12 on FS1, two on FS2, one on CBS National, three on CBS Sports Network, three on the ESPN networks and four on FSN regional networks available throughout the country. The Wake game is expected to be shown on one of the ESPN networks or the ACC Network and the TCU game will likely be picked up either by an ESPN network or FOX Sports Southwest.

The Musketeers will play as many as 21 regular season games this season against teams that made the 2019 NCAA and NIT Tournaments. Xavier will play home-and-home series against each of its nine BIG EAST rivals, including 2018 NCAA teams Marquette, Seton Hall, St. John’s and Villanova in addition to 2019 NIT teams Butler, Creighton, Georgetown and Providence.

Xavier’s other three potential games against 2019 NCAA teams include Buffalo in the second round of the Charleston Classic, on Nov. 22, Florida in XU’s final game of the Charleston Classic on Nov. 24 and the annual Skyline Chili Crosstown Shootout vs. Cincinnati on Dec. 7 at Cintas Center. XU hosts 2019 NIT Runner-up Lipscomb on Nov. 30 and visits 2019 NIT Semifinalist TCU on Dec. 22. The TCU game is part of the first edition of the BIG EAST vs. Big 12 challenge series.

Xavier travels to Wake Forest on Dec. 14 for the Skip Prosser Classic. On Dec. 18 XU hosts Western Carolina, whose head coach is Mark Prosser, son of the late Xavier and Wake Forest head coach Skip Prosser.

Just short of 9 weeks from now, the season will finally get rolling. Xavier obviously has the pieces in place to make something special of this year, and I think the schedule lines up nicely for them. The full thing is posted below; what are your thoughts?