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SEC announces new men’s basketball scheduling format

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For some conferences, the task of putting together a schedule has become a bit more cumbersome thanks to conference realignment with the size of the league ruling out the possibility of every team playing each other twice. With that being the case adjustments need to be made, and for the SEC this means a new scheduling format that was revealed at the conference’s annual meetings in Destin, Florida on Thursday.

While the number of conference games each team plays, 18, will not change the setup for the schedules has changed. In total each team will play five opponents both home and away with three of those being “permanent” opponents that they’ll see twice a year every season. They’ll face the other eight teams on the schedule just once, with four of those games being home contests and four coming on the road.

The conference also announced the three “permanent” opponents for each team, and they are:

Alabama - Auburn / Mississippi State / LSU
Arkansas - Missouri / Texas A&M / LSU
Auburn - Alabama / Ole Miss / Georgia
Florida - Kentucky / Georgia / Vanderbilt
Georgia - South Carolina / Florida / Auburn
Kentucky - Florida / Tennessee / Vanderbilt
LSU - Texas A&M / Alabama / Arkansas
Ole Miss - Mississippi State / Auburn / Missouri
Mississippi State - Ole Miss / Alabama / South Carolina
Missouri - Arkansas / Texas A&M / Ole Miss
South Carolina - Georgia / Tennessee / Mississippi State
Tennessee - Vanderbilt / Kentucky / South Carolina
Texas A&M - LSU / Arkansas / Missouri
Vanderbilt - Tennessee / Kentucky / Florida

According to the release the full SEC conference schedule will be unveiled in August. The SEC’s done a good job of protecting many of its rivalries with this move, and scheduling stability can only help the league moving forward. Five teams reached the NCAA tournament this past season, and the SEC is expected to take a step forward in 2015-16.