The Big East and Big Ten have called a Monday afternoon joint press conference at the Garden’s Delta Club to announce a season-opening round of games beginning with the 2015-16 season, sources said.
It will feature eight games between the two conferences, per sources, at on-campus sites and be televised by Fox Sports 1, ESPN and the Big 10 Network. That means two Big East and six Big Ten teams won’t be involved each year. There will be two games a night, beginning on the Tuesday after the first full week of the college basketball season.
This event will be named the Gavitt Tip-Off Games in honor of Hall of Famer Dave Gavitt, the Big East founder and former Providence basketball coach who passed away in 2011 at the age of 73.
The move would seem to help the new Big East in terms of strength of schedule and early-season visibility nationwide.
Current and former Big East and Big Ten coaches will be in attendance Monday, along with Big East commissioner Val Ackerman and Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany. New Jersey rivals Rutgers and Seton Hall have an eight-year deal to play each other, but that won’t be part of the showcase, sources said. Rutgers isn’t expected to play St. John’s, either.
The Atlantic 10 and ACC announced their own yearly challenge, doubleheaders starting in 2015, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The Big 10 was in talks with Barclays Center to play its postseason tournament in Brooklyn, before the arena came to an agreement with the ACC.