UCF men’s basketball set to host 5 NCAA tourney teams in Year 2 of Big 12

UCF’s home win over Kansas was one of the highlights of the men’s basketball program’s first season in the Big 12.

The Knights will have another opportunity to possibly make history as they’ll host the Jayhawks once again as part of its Big 12 schedule matrix released Thursday.

UCF will play a home-and-away series with Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas, Oklahoma State and TCU. The rest of the home schedule features BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, Kansas State and Utah.

Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU and Utah will make their first trips to Orlando, while the Knights will visit Colorado and Kansas for the first time.

The remaining road schedule is against Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, Texas Tech and West Virginia.

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The Knights will play 20 conference games as the league expanded its men’s schedule from 18 games.

“Every game is hotly contested, I don’t care who you play,” coach Johnny Dawkins recently told the Sentinel. “Every night you go out there, the game will be incredibly competitive.”

UCF (17-16) finished 12th in the Big 12 at 7-11. The Knights were 4-5 at Addition Financial Arena in league games and 3-6 away.

For the first time in program history, the team defeated three ranked teams in the same season: No. 3 Kansas, No. 23 Oklahoma and No. 23 Texas Tech.

This year’s schedule features games against nine squads that qualified for last season’s NCAA Tournament and three teams that earned berths in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT).

The Big 12 has expanded its membership to 16 schools with the addition of Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah. At the same time, longtime blueblood members Texas and Oklahoma have left for the Southeastern Conference.

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“It’s going to be an adjustment for all of us learning about their systems as we went through this year [in the Big 12], taking notes, studying and learning…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/ucf-men-basketball-set-host-160100279.html

Author : Orlando Sentinel

Publish date : 2024-06-27 16:01:00

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