BYU-Villanova is on the opening day of the college basketball regular season and part of a double header in Vegas with Arizona-Florida. Those two games are the premier matchups of the opening day. Villanova has a new coach in Kevin Willard and is breaking in several new pieces.
BYU-UConn is on a Saturday and gets a primetime spotlight on FOX during a college football Saturday. BYU hosts TCU that same day in football, and kickoff time for that will be announced 12 or 6-days before. Since FOX has Big 12 football rights, one potential opportunity for FOX could be the have the BYU-TCU game be a 1:30 MT lead-in or 8:30 MT following the basketball game.
UConn and BYU should both be AP top 10 teams heading into that matchup. This will be UConn’s first real test of the regular season after opening with three cupcakes. They do, however, have preseason exhibitions versus Boston College and Michigan State. BYU has preseason exhibitions versus Nebraska and North Carolina and the season opener versus Villanova.