Matchups for the first year of the Gavitt Games have been announced. Georgetown vs Maryland and Creighton vs Indiana are the highlights. Michigan State, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Purdue, Northwestern and Minnesota are sitting out the first year.

Tuesday, Nov. 17
Georgetown at Maryland: First meeting since 2008-09 season
DePaul at Penn State: First meeting since 1984-85 season
Nebraska at Villanova: First meeting since 1998-99 season

Wednesday, Nov. 18
Illinois at Providence: First meeting since 2003-04 season

Thursday, Nov. 19
Creighton at Indiana: First meeting since 1974-75 season
Iowa at Marquette: First meeting since 1982-83 season
Rutgers at St. John’s: First meeting since 2012-13 season

Friday, Nov. 20 Xavier at Michigan: First meeting since 1988-89 season

Not entirely sure this thing is going to work out like they want. People are still very interested in college football at this point and it seems a little too spread out to me (I'd put it all 1-2 days). That said, it doesn't to be huge to be successful.

If they think this will become some kind of huge thing like the ACC-Big Ten challenge its not going to be successful. If it they think this will become a nice OOC series (that eventually expands to 10 games a year from the inaugural 8) that features some interesting and occasionally some high-profile inter-conference matchups for basketball, I think they have a winner. My guess is the latter is the baseline expectation and I do wish they'd go for having all 10 Big East members participating each year and thus having more Big Ten squads involved each year. Rutgers could certainly stand to get involved a guaranteed 5th time over 8 years particularly with the Georgetown, Nova, St. John's and Providence squads and to a lesser extent with DePaul and Marquette.

I'm not really sure what's going on with these matchups. Georgetown-Maryland, and maybe Indiana-Creighton, are really only games for the casual fan to get excited about. None of the other rivalry games (Indiana-Butler, Creighton-Nebraska, Wisconsin-Marquette, etc) are part of the series and last year's best Big 10 teams (Wisconsin, MSU, tOSU) are not participating. The organizers are missing out on some big opportunities to create positive buzz and turn this series into a bigger event.

Who came up with these match-ups?

Should've been:
DePaul vs Northwestern
Villanova vs Penn State
Creighton vs Nebraska
Butler vs Indiana
Xavier vs Ohio State
Seton Hall vs Rutgers
Marquette vs Wisconson

Only one that they got right was:
Georgetown vs Maryland

Gotta do regional "rivalries" to kick this off, comon now.