College Basketball Opening Day: Loyola, DePaul, Northwestern and UIC All Tip Off Monday Night in Chicago
The 2026-27 college basketball season opens Monday, and Chicago gets a full slate at home: UIC starts at 4 p.m., then Loyola, DePaul and Northwestern all tip at 7 — with No. 3 Illinois and Chicago State also in action on opening night.
College basketball is back, and Chicago does not have to wait for it. The 2026-27 season opens Monday, November 2 — opening-day searches are running hot nationally, with 'grambling state basketball' among the top ten Google Trends US searches in the snapshot read this morning — and four Chicago-area teams open at home on the first night, all within a few miles of each other.
The day starts earliest at UIC, where the Flames host St. Francis (Illinois) at 4 p.m. Central at Credit Union 1 Arena, streaming on ESPN+. At 7 p.m., three home openers tip at once: Loyola Chicago hosts The Citadel at Gentile Arena on the Rogers Park campus (ESPN+), DePaul hosts West Georgia at Wintrust Arena (ESPN+), and Northwestern opens a five-game homestand against Binghamton at Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston, on B1G+ and WGN Radio 720.
The state's ranked headliner plays downstate: No. 3 Illinois hosts Fairleigh Dickinson in Champaign on opening night, part of a national slate that includes Gonzaga-Purdue and UCLA-Arizona in Las Vegas. Chicago State takes the hardest road assignment of the night, visiting No. 7 Texas in Austin on the SEC Network at 8 p.m. Central. By midnight, every Chicago program will have a first result on the board — and the season that ends with confetti in Detroit will be underway.
