A change in the 2015-16 Ivy League basketball schedule has made it so a storied Ancient Eight program can play on ESPN in prime time.
Unfortunately for newly-hired coach Steve Donahue, that team is not Penn.
Two weeks ago, the Quakers announced their schedule for the upcoming season, highlighted by a trip to Seattle, a road contest down 33rd street against Drexel and six consecutive weekend doubleheaders in Ivy play.
Initially, the Red and Blue were slated to host Harvard on Feb. 5 before taking on Dartmouth at home the following night. As is customary in the Ancient Eight, the next time Penn played the Crimson and Big Green in early March, those games would be flipped — the Quakers would travel to New Hampshire on Friday and then face Harvard in Cambridge in the doubleheader’s second stanza.
However, the Ivy League announced earlier this week that Penn’s first matchup with the Crimson will be moved to Feb. 6, with the Red and Blue taking on Dartmouth on that Friday instead.
The reason for the change is ESPN’s wish to feature Harvard’s game with Princeton on ESPNU. It will be the fourth time in the last five seasons that the Crimson’s contest with the Tigers ends up on one of ESPN’s platforms.
In addition to its primetime affair in February, Harvard will appear on ESPN three times during the Diamond Head Classic in Hawaii in December.
Meanwhile, coming off their third consecutive losing season, Donahue’s Red and Blue squad is unlikely to find itself on the Worldwide Leader in Sports too frequently next year. Instead, Penn’s games will largely end up streaming online on the Ivy League Digital Network, while potentially appearing occasionally on the American Sports Network and NBC Sports Network.
The Quakers’ second doubleheader with the Big Green and Crimson will go ahead as planned. After Penn faces Harvard on March 5, it will wrap up its season with a road affair against rival Princeton on March 8.
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