It is supposed to be on BTN Plus, 8:00 PM Friday, Nov. 9.
Hungan1, do you have a source for that (so that, hopefully, the following analysis can be proved wrong)?
The earlier statement about TV coverage of our home opener appears to be incorrect, at least as near as I can determine. In fact, unless someone can find evidence to the contrary, it seems as if there is no national or regional TV coverage at all - in particular, nothing on the BTN family of networks or their affiliates.
I first checked the BTN schedule via BTN2Go, and on Nov. 9 at that time slot (
https://www.btn2go.com/schedule?day=2018-11-09&tids=25 ) the only scheduled Gopher BTN coverage is Minnesota/Wisconsin men's ice hocktey on BTN2Go/FSN/FSW, and Indiana/Minnesota volleyball on BTN Plus. The good news is that they're covering our nationally ranked volleyball team, who is (as I speak, through the Iowa match) undefeated in the B1G. The bad news is that apparently there is no BTN TV coverage, after all, of our historic sellout of the Barn for Gopher women's basketball's inaugural home game (since that BTN-Plus time slot is occupied by volleyball).
Then I double-checked the article, Big Ten Announces Women's Basketball Television Schedule (
https://bigten.org/news/2018/9/6/big-ten-announces-womens-basketball-television-schedule.aspx ). It states that "National television coverage for Big Ten women’s basketball begins on the opening Sunday of the season, Nov. 11, live on BTN when Northwestern plays host to Duke in the Wildcats’ first game at newly-refurbished Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston." The referenced PDF schedule (
https://bigten.org/documents/2018/9/6//2018_19_B1G_WBB_TV_Schedule.pdf?id=6067 ) confirms this - no BTN TV games earlier than the Nov. 11 Duke/NW game.
I checked ESPN's NCAAW Div I master schedule (
http://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/schedule/_/date/20181109/group/50 ), and nothing shows up under the National TV coverage column for our Nov. 9 game against New Hampshire. Argh!!
Furthermore, ESPN's press release (
https://espnmediazone.com/us/press-...ry-leading-womens-college-basketball-coverage ) states that "ESPN’s extensive coverage of women’s college basketball continues this season, with more than 135 matchups across ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network and Longhorn Network, with an additional 1,500 games on ESPN3, SEC Network +, ACC Network Extra, and ESPN+, the first-ever multi-sport, direct-to-consumer subscription streaming service from The Walt Disney Company’s Direct-to-Consumer and International group and ESPN. Throughout the regular season, more than 5,000 college basketball matchups will be available across ESPN platforms. Games that will be available on ESPN+ will be revealed in the coming weeks." But at the bottom of the page, they seem to only show a subset of these 5,000+ matchups to be shown on some network. Where does one go to see if we might be streamed on ESPN3 or ESPN+ or Disney Direct-to-Consumer, for instance? Or is the fact that we're missing off the above master schedule, definitive.
Does all that mean we struck out as far as TV coverage goes? Or does it imply that we have to take the initiative and shop around for some other network to cover it? Maybe we should convince ESPN that this is a notable event, and to send out a team to cover it (including on-site analyst)? I'd personally like to see them send out Rebecca Lobo or Kara Lawson or LaChina Robinson to cover the event. Or perhaps Rachel's team-mate/buddy Chiney Ogwumike. [Rach, can you get on that one?] Maybe we need to alert Mechelle Voepel or Doris Burke that they're missing out on an opportunity to broadcast a historic event.
Perhaps local TV could at least cover it. I'm not a media guru, so I'm clueless as to what the options are. Clearly, one of our local TV channel's (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox Sports North) ought to pick up on the opportunity to broadcast the entire game, not just mention the event in a 15-second nightly-sports-news spot, right after all the high-school football scores are scrolled down the screen. In any event, it appears that at the moment, we're high and dry in terms of TV coverage. Please, somebody convince me that I missed something. If not, then maybe we need to start a Twitter campaign.