Big South Reveals 2017-18 Men's Basketball League Schedule
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (www.BigSouthSports.com) – The Big South Conference revealed its 2017-18 men’s basketball composite league schedule Thursday morning. The 90-game slate over an eight-week span begins on Saturday, Dec. 30 with all 10 teams in action, and each member will play an 18-game double-round robin schedule for the second consecutive season.
The Big South, which has had at least three programs qualify for the postseason each of the past five years, will play conference games each day of the week for the first time since 2003-04. A three-game week will occur early in the season to accommodate the Dec. 30 start, while one Friday and two Sunday dates have been added. Four Thursday dates -- Jan. 18, Feb. 1, Feb. 15 and Feb. 22 -- will be ESPNU Wildcard national television selections 21 days in advance.
The Dec. 30 league openers include Campbell at UNC Asheville in the teams’ first meeting since Chris Clemons’ record-breaking 51-point performance against the Bulldogs in the 2017 Big South Quarterfinals. Additional schedule highlights include a full slate of five games on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day (Monday, Jan. 15), the 2017 Championship game rematch between defending champion Winthrop and runner-up Campbell (Jan. 6 in Buies Creek, N.C., and Jan. 27 in Rock Hill, S.C.), and the first conference game for new Presbyterian College head coach Dustin Kerns (Dec. 30 at home vs. Radford).
Winthrop carries the conference’s longest active regular-season Big South win streak into the season at five games, while UNC Asheville owns the league’s active win streak for home conference victories at nine.
The 2018 Big South Men’s Basketball Championship will again be a home-site/earned seed format that returned in 2017. The four lowest seeds will compete in the first round on Tuesday, Feb. 27, which will be hosted by the No. 7 and No. 8 seeds. The quarterfinals and semifinals will be played at the No. 1 seed on Thursday-Friday, March 1-2 on ESPN3, while the highest remaining seed will host the championship game on Sunday, March 4 at 1:00pm on ESPN.
The 2016-17 conference season (90 games) featured 47.8 percent decided by single digits -- 65.1 percent of which were margins of five points or less. In addition, the Big South earned a No. 13 seed in the NCAA Tournament, four teams appeared in postseason events last year, the conference posted two wins over Power 5 members, and the Big South advanced to the quarterfinals of the Collegeinsider.com Tournament for the third time in four years.
Click here to view the 2017-18 Big South Men's Basketball Conference schedule in .PDF format. Confirmed game times and the Conference’s TV package will be available at a later date.