Athens — Georgia's basketball team will be young next season, but that's not keeping the Bulldogs from seeking to play an ambitious schedule.

Seven months before the season is set to begin, the Bulldogs know they are assured of road games at Western Kentucky and Georgia Tech. They are also expected to play in the Preseason NIT and will likely go to the Purdue regional, though that has not yet been finalized.

Meanwhile, associate head coach Pete Hermann, who is charged with arranging Georgia's schedule each year, is busy looking for more dates against other major conference opponents. Thus far, he said he has talked to Connecticut, Duke, Florida State, Kansas, Kansas State, Syracuse and UCLA, among others.

"I always talk to a lot of people," Hermann said Saturday. "The only thing I know for sure is we're at Western Kentucky and Tech and we're in the Preseason NIT. But I don't have any signed contracts yet, and I'm not 100 percent sure we're going be at Purdue, though it looks that way. There will be four host sites, and one of those sites is Purdue."

The other three sites are Arizona, Boston College and Oklahoma.

If Georgia goes to Purdue, it would play another yet-to-be determined opponent in the opening game and its winner would face the winner of Purdue and another opponent-to-be-named the next night. No dates have been set, but generally the preseason NIT is played just before the rest of Division I competition begins in mid-November.

The Bulldogs alternate home-and-away with Georgia Tech every season and will play in Atlanta this year. Georgia returns to Western Kentucky for the final game of a four-game series that was supposed to end this past season, but the two schools could not agree on dates.

Georgia's roster will feature six freshmen, four sophomores, one junior and two seniors. But Hermann said the Bulldogs rarely deviate much from a general scheduling philosophy.

"We always want our strength of schedule to be strong," he said. "We were 15th three years ago and [37th] last year, and we want to stay in that range. We want to play five or six major-conference schools. We need to get at least one to play us at home, but it's not easy. I thought I had two this week but neither ended up working out."