UK Athletics Photo
Kentucky basketball fans often have felt like the NCAA Tournament selection committee did the men’s basketball team no favors with tournament seedings. Now it seems that the Southeastern Conference certainly is doing coach Kenny Brooks and his team no favors.
The Cats played at North Carolina in the SEC/ACC Challenge last season and were expecting to get a home game in the same challenge this season. Instead, Kentucky will go to Miami and play an ACC team on the road for the second straight season.
Brooks was not overjoyed with the explanation he got about why UK is playing on the road again instead of hosting a team from the ACC.
“It’s an explanation, but it’s not a good one. But it is difficult because we anticipated playing an ACC opponent here. Then you can’t scramble to try to do other things because those marquee opponents already have their schedules done too.” Brooks said last week. “Just kind of put us behind the eight ball a little bit, but we’ll just do what they tell us.”
Kentucky’s non-conference home schedule is not overpowering — the Cats play at Louisville this season after beating the Cardinals in Memorial Coliseum in Brooks’ first season.
Kentucky will host Morehead State (Nov. 3), Monmouth (Nov. 6), Purdue (Nov. 18), Central Michigan (Dec. 7), Wright State (Dec. 19) and Hofstra (Dec. 28). Purdue is the biggest name on that list but won only 10 games last season and lost by 30 to visiting UK last season.
Brooks said it was hard putting together a schedule last year after he got the UK job and brought in a number of big-time players. Some teams already on the schedule even tried to “back out” of playing Kentucky.
The UK coach did say last week that there were more matchups to be released that he thinks fans “will be excited about” but still regrets not having a marquee matchup with an ACC team in Memorial.
The SEC schedule will also be a bit different even though it has not been officially announced.
“Our SEC schedule shifted. We no longer play Georgia twice; we play Vanderbilt twice. Vanderbilt is going to be probably a top 15 team,” Brooks said.
