This is a basketball-centric post. It will be about how the Big Ten Network has announced the games it is picking up for Iowa Basketball this upcoming winter. I’ll get to that in a bit, but just bear with me for one paragraph here. If you don’t want to read about football anymore and just want to read about basketball, skip exactly one paragraph and we will get onto the good stuff.

I’ve been kind of quiet for a bit. I was really sick last week because I have an extremely pathetic immune system, and I’m still sick this week, because extremely pathetic immune system. I went to the football game on Saturday and that didn’t make me feel any better. Just know that for the most part, I don’t want to talk about this past football game. Not because there isn’t a whole ton of things to say about it (we could honestly fill a couple weeks of content just based off of the NDSU game), but because guess what - there’s a game against Rutgers this next Saturday. We can either continue to talk about how awful something was, or we can move forward to talk about our hatred for those “Big Ten” losers.

Ok, that’s all I have to say about football. Thanks for reading, or for skipping and continuing down to this part. Just this morning, BTN announced the 2016-17 basketball schedule as pertains to their TV programming. Iowa plays a whopping 13 conference games on the network this season, which is pretty good! Here is a full list of the games that the Hawkeyes are scheduled to play on BTN this season:

Dec. 28, 2016: Iowa at Purdue, 8 p.m.

Jan. 1, 2017: Michigan at Iowa, TBD

Jan. 5, 2017: Iowa at Nebraska, 8 p.m.

Jan. 8, 2017: Rutgers at Iowa, 1:15 or 3:30 p.m.

Jan. 12, 2017: Purdue at Iowa, 8 p.m.

Jan. 15, 2017: Iowa at Northwestern, 6:30 p.m.

Jan. 25, 2017: Iowa at Illinois, 8 p.m.

Jan. 31, 2017: Iowa at Rutgers, 6 p.m.

Feb. 5, 2017: Nebraska at Iowa, 1 p.m.

Feb. 8, 2017: Iowa at Minnesota, 8 p.m.

Feb. 11, 2017: Iowa at Michigan St., 5 p.m.

Feb. 18, 2017: Illinois at Iowa, 1 p.m.

Mar. 5, 2016: Penn State at Iowa, 12 p.m.

Some quick notes about the schedule:

Iowa is scheduled to play in the back end of BTN’s opening night doubleheader! Nebraska and Indiana play first, followed by Iowa and Purdue. Lots of important basketball being played in the Hoosier State on the opening night of conference play.

The Hawks are scheduled to play a whopping five primetime games on the conference network this season, with the Michigan/Iowa New Year’s Day game not having been announced yet as a possibility. That’s pretty good!

As previously stated, 13 of the 18 conference games will be played on BTN. That leaves the door open for ESPN to pick up five of these games. You might’ve noticed that neither of Iowa’s two games against Maryland are listed, nor are games against Indiana and Wisconsin (and one against Ohio State, which is meh). Plenty of potential to get put on ESPN this season if the team performs. There are still some open spots on the BTN calendar, though, and only one of them matches up with an Iowa game (Feb. 25 at Maryland), so that pretty much ensures that Iowa won’t be on BTN those games.

Iowa will probably go 13-0 in games played on BTN. Not up for discussion.

Go Hawks.