No. 16 West Virginia will travel to No. 3 Kansas Saturday, one of three match ups between ranked clubs across the college basketball landscape.

But the Mountaineers meeting with the Jayhawks will not be televised, well at least not in the traditional manner as the game was selected as part of the Big 12 Conference’s new streaming agreement with ESPN that was expanded in the spring.

Big 12 Now on ESPN+ will feature the game meaning that fans will need to have access to the subscription streaming service which costs $4.99 per month. The platform can be broadcast from iPhone, iPad, AppleTV, Android devices, Roku, Chromecast, FireTV, XBOX One, Playstation 4, Oculus Go and Samsung connected TVs. It is also available via ESPN.com on the web as an option.

This isn’t the first time that the Mountaineers have had a game broadcast on the service after the ironically the football matchup with Kansas was featured this past season.

It also won’t be the last, as West Virginia is scheduled to have at least four more games this season including the home rematch with Kansas as well as the home date with Baylor and road games at Texas Tech and Baylor.

The agreement will run through the 2024-25 season meaning that it’s something that the fan bases across the league footprint are likely going to have to become accustomed to as the plan is to host several different games across major sports.

Needless to say it's going to be adapt or be left behind.

But the games won’t be available through other means so it leaves fans with little options in terms of watching the game through traditional measures. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it does open up avenues to watch the game in a lot of different places on different platforms.

But there is also the question over streaming reliability with broadband access in the state and helping fans connect to the network which is obviously a huge shift from what they’ve become accustomed to.

“I think it’s tough for our people,” head coach Bob Huggins said.

That’s in large part because some of those aforementioned issues and some with technology as well.

“It’s going to take some time I think. We may be the school where our fans have the hardest time of being able to, or whatever, have the technology to be able to watch the game,” Huggins said.

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