SEC releases conference basketball schedule

On Friday, the SEC released the conference basketball schedule, which — unlike the football schedule — will not be the extent of the season. Television network assignments and game times haven’t been announced yet.

Anyway, here is Vanderbilt’s 18-game conference schedule.

• December 30: Florida
• January 5: at Kentucky
• January 9: Mississippi State
• January 12: at Missouri
• January 16: at Tennessee
• January 20: Texas A&M
• January 23: Arkansas
• January 27: at Florida
• January 30: South Carolina
• February 3: at Texas A&M
• February 6: at Georgia
• February 9: Auburn
• February 13: at Mississippi State
• February 17: Kentucky
• February 20: at Alabama
• February 24: Tennessee
• February 27: Ole Miss
• March 2: at LSU
• March 10-14: SEC Tournament

My first observation is that the final Saturday of the regular season has been left open, presumably to allow for makeups of games postponed due to COVID-19 outbreaks.

Vanderbilt having Kentucky, Florida, and Tennessee as its permanent rivals continues to be a bad thing; the consensus seems to be that those are three of the top five teams in the conference this season. Then again, the other two teams on the schedule twice are rebuilding Mississippi State and a Texas A&M team that went 10-8 in the SEC last year in spite of not being particularly good.

We’re still waiting on the nonconference schedule as well; we already know that Vanderbilt will compete in the Legends Classic on December 1 and 3, and I think the scheduling agreement with the AAC calls for Vanderbilt to play a yet-to-be-named AAC team on January 2. Other than that, I don’t know.