The NCAA Division I men's basketball season continues to form as 2020 inches closer to November.
Beginning on Dec. 29 and 30, an 18-game conference schedule will be played through early March by each SEC team with two additional open dates for potential postponements or cancellations. The plan for now is to have 10 of the 14 teams in the conference use one of those two dates to participate in the SEC/Big 12 challenge in January, while the other four will play league games.
As of now — barring any changes due to the pandemic — the SEC tournament is still tentatively scheduled for March 10-14 in Nashville, Tennessee, and Selection Sunday is still expected to be March 14 as well.
Last week, the NCAA made public the decision to delay the start of the 2020-21 season from Nov. 10 to Nov. 25.
UF's non-conference schedule — which was released in May — has four games slated before the new 2020-21 start date, including a previously scheduled road trip to Florida State that will now need to be canceled or rescheduled. According to the NCAA, a maximum of 27 games will be played by each program this season, so the Gators will soon be busy restructuring their non-conference tilt that currently includes a trip to Sunrise, Florida, to play in the Orange Bowl Classic, a neutral-site game against Penn State in Brooklyn, New York, and a road game against Oklahoma in Norman.
Florida will begin practicing on Oct. 14. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, no scrimmages or exhibition games will be allowed between then and whoever the Gators open up their campaign against on Nov. 25.
Sophomore guard Tre Mann at the O'Connell Center last season. This year, the Gators season begins against a yet-to-be-determined opponent Nov. 25, while the SEC schedule tips off Dec. 29.
