Sept. 15, 2008
IOWA CITY – The Big Ten Conference today announced its women’s basketball non-conference Big Ten Network (BTN) television schedule for 2008-09, along with its expanded streaming schedule on bigtennetwork.com. Big Ten teams will receive more coverage than ever before with a record 119 games set to be distributed by BTN, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and bigtennetwork.com.
All games streamed on bigtennetwork.com will be live and made available free-of-charge. In all, BTN currently boasts a slate of 55 regular season games and an additional 56 on its website.
Iowa’s home games against Iowa State (Dec. 7) and Northern Iowa (Dec. 11) have been picked to be televised to a national cable audience on BTN. The Iowa State contest will start at 1 p.m., while the Northern Iowa game will tip at 7 p.m. in Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
In total, Iowa will be televised a minimum of six times on BTN, with the last three regular season games serving as ESPN2/BTN wildcard selections and every Big Ten Tournament contest receiving television coverage. Additionally, Iowa’s first non-conference road game, at Kansas (Nov. 18), will be broadcast to a national cable audience on ESPN.
The conference office announced that 10 of Iowa’s conference games will be available for webcast on bigtennetwork.com. In total, a minimum 14 of its 18 conference games will be available on different media platforms. Iowa’s final three regular season games could be chosen for broadcast on either BTN or bigtennetwork.com; a decision on those three games will be made in mid-February.
“This is an exciting time for our program and the Big Ten Conference with the amount of media coverage we are receiving on a national scale,” said Iowa Head Coach Lisa Bluder. “With 14 of our 18 conference games selected by BTN and bigtennetwork.com, it gives recruits and Hawkeye fans the opportunity to watch unprecedented coverage of our games home and away.”