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Kentucky basketball 2023-24 schedule: John Calipari's road next … – Courier Journal
LEXINGTON, Ky. — Kentucky basketball‘s 2023-24 schedule came into better focus in June, as the SEC released home and away designations for the league slate.
The Wildcats‘ 18-game conference schedule is evenly split, with nine games at Rupp Arena and nine on the road.
UK’s permanent league foes — the schools Kentucky plays both home and away — remain the same next season: Florida, Tennessee and Vanderbilt. The Wildcats also will face Arkansas and Mississippi State twice during the 2023-24 regular season. It will be the second straight year UK and Arkansas square off two times in the regular season.
Kentucky also will have home contests against Alabama, Georgia, Missouri and Ole Miss. UK will travel for games at Auburn, LSU, South Carolina and Texas A&M.
Tipoff times, dates and broadcast information for next season’s SEC schedule will be announced at a later date.
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It’s a similar story with the non-conference portion of the Wildcats’ season, where some of the opponents are known, but dates and times haven’t been released.
UK’s athletics department has released dates for only two games next season.
One is Kentucky’s matchup against Kansas in the Champions Classic, which will be Nov. 14 at the United Center in Chicago. The other is the first-ever ACC/SEC Challenge, which will be held on home courts of schools in those leagues. The conferences released the schedule in June, with UK set to host Miami at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 28.
St. Joseph’s released its non-conference slate July 28 which includes a game against Kentucky at Rupp Arena on Nov. 20. While UK has yet to confirm the home tilt, it would be just the third matchup between the two schools. The Wildcats won both prior meetings, earning a 41-30 victory at Convention Hall in Philadelphia in 1939 before taking an 83-68 victory in the Sweet 16 (known then as the regional semifinals) of the 1997 NCAA Tournament en route to the national championship game in Rick Pitino‘s final season as Kentucky’s head coach.
Kentucky will be on the road for its annual rivalry game against Louisville next season, while UK will host Gonzaga at Rupp Arena, the second of a six-game series between the two programs.
Kentucky also is part of the CBS Sports Classic field; though no opponent or location has been officially revealed, college hoops analyst Rocco Miller reported UK will face Ohio State in Atlanta on Dec. 16. It would mark the first meeting between the Wildcats and Buckeyes since 2019, when OSU won 71-65 in Las Vegas in that year’s CBS Sports Classic.
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The status of two other potential non-conference games is unknown: Michigan and Notre Dame.
In 2019, UK and Michigan agreed to a three-game series, with the first matchup set to take place in London, England, in 2020 followed by games at each school’s home arenas (2021 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and 2022 in Lexington). The coronavirus pandemic disrupted those plans for the next two seasons before the schools finally met in London in December 2022, with the Wildcats winning 73-69.
When Michigan released its non-conference schedule for the 2023-24 season last week, however, Kentucky was nowhere to be found.
UK and Notre Dame were set to play in three straight seasons, 2020 through 2022, with games in Lexington and South Bend, Indiana, sandwiched around a neutral-site tilt. But the neutral-site game hasn’t happened, as the two schools played on their home floors in 2020 (Lexington) and 2021 (South Bend). Last year, CBS Sports college basketball writer Jon Rothstein reported the neutral site game, set for the 2022-23 season, had been pushed back to the 2023-24 campaign.
Whether that game still will take place this season isn’t clear.
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Home and away opponents
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Reach Kentucky men’s basketball and football reporter Ryan Black at rblack@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @RyanABlack.
