CARBONDALE — SIU Salukis men’s basketball will be seen nationally on CBS Sports Network at least four times during the 2023-24 season as the Missouri Valley Conference announced its basketball slate across the CBS Sports platform Thursday.
The 2023-24 regular-season package of games on CBS Sports Network begins with SIU’s participation in the Cancun Challenge. The Salukis open with James Madison (Nov. 21) and will either meet Fresno State or New Mexico State the following day.
Non-conference coverage continues with SIU playing host to Oklahoma State on December 5 at 8 p.m. CT.
The final pre-determined national broadcast will be on January 20 when the Salukis travel to Northern Iowa with a 7 p.m. tip.
The Conference and CBS Sports will utilize the Wildcard Selection process to determine the final regular season telecast on Saturday, Feb. 3. As part of the Wildcard Selection process, CBS Sports Network will announce its telecast selection 14 days from competition.
Postseason coverage from the 2024 State Farm MVC Men’s Basketball Tournament — known uniquely as Arch Madness — in St. Louis includes four opening-round games on March 7 and four quarterfinal contests on March 8. Those telecasts are distributed on linear platforms Bally Sports Midwest-Indiana-Kansas City-South-Southeast and NBC Sports Chicago plus live digitally on ESPN+ within the league’s six-state footprint of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee for the first time. The Arch Madness semifinals on March 9 and the title game on March 10 will be shown on CBS Sports Network and CBS Sports, respectively, as part of a sublicense agreement between ESPN and CBS Sports.
CBS Sports has carried the championship game of Arch Madness every year since 2006 after ESPN or ESPN2 had served as television home for the title tilt from 1991 to 2005. In 2020, the Missouri Valley joined the Big East (New York City) as the only Division I athletics conference to conduct its men’s basketball tournaments in the same city for 30 or more consecutive years.
A 2014 Southern Illinois graduate, Tim McCaughan joined Saluki Athletics in August 2022 and is the primary contact for SIU basketball and baseball.
He spent the previous six years at Indiana State as assistant director of athletic communications serving as the primary sport contact for several Sycamore programs, most recently with Sycamore basketball, cross country, golf, spirit squad while also serving as a member of the ISU Hall of Fame committee. He spent five years working with the Sycamore baseball program -- promoting the team during a pair of NCAA postseason appearances, three years as the primary football contact while spending his first two years in Terre Haute working with ISU’s volleyball and women’s basketball programs.
He has promoted student-athletes and coaches to several postseason awards during his time at Indiana State, most notably linebacker Jonas Griffith, who earned six All-American honors during his career as well as Ryan Boyle who was named the Missouri Valley Football Conference Newcomer of the Year. He also saw Sycamore head football coach Curt Mallory be named the MVFC Coach of the Year as well as a finalist for the STATS FCS Eddie Robinson award, which honors the National Coach of the Year. McCaughan played a role in the first Academic All-American award for Indiana State baseball since 2009 when catcher Max Wright earned the honor following the 2019 season as well as promoting Geremy Guerrero to a program-record five All-American honors during the 2021 baseball season.
McCaughan covered a nationally ranked Sycamore baseball team in 2019 that picked up its 10th NCAA Tournament appearance after securing the No. 2 seed at the Nashville Regional following a Missouri Valley Conference Tournament Championship -- the first in over 20 years for the program. After knocking off both McNeese and Ohio State, the Sycamores advanced to the regional final against No. 1 ranked Vanderbilt, falling to the eventual National Champion Commodores. He also promoted the MVC Newcomer of the Year in Collin Liberatore as well as the League’s Defensive Player of the Year in Jake Means.
