Challenging schedules await Georgia men’s and women’s basketball teams

ATHENS — The full schedules for Georgia’s men’s and women’s team basketball teams finally are out. If it feels a little anticlimactic, there’s a reason.

Blame it on the maddening way the SEC and its members release basketball schedules. It’s done incrementally.

First, they will announce a smattering of marquee non-conference matchups. Then, they’ll release the entirety of the non-conference slate. Next comes the conference opponents each school will face, but with no accompanying dates. Finally, the teams will release their whole conference schedule, dates included.

Times and television? You will have to wait a while still for that.

In any case, here’s what we have so far for the Bulldogs’ men’s and women’s teams:

• In SEC play, the Georgia men will face Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, LSU and South Carolina twice. The Bulldogs will travel to Kentucky, Mississippi State, Missouri and Vanderbilt. Florida, LSU, Ole Miss and South Carolina are the home games. As of Thursday, there are now some dates to go with that
• The Bulldogs, who were 16-16 in Year 1 under coach Mike White, open on the road against Missouri on Jan. 6. That’s one of four trips they will make the first month of the year, including Kentucky (Jan. 20) and Florida (Jan. 27).
• Georgia will have its most extensive travel in February, with trips to Mississippi State (Feb. 7), Arkansas (Feb. 10), Vanderbilt (Feb. 21) and LSU (Feb. 27).
• The last month of the season is bracketed by Auburn. The Bulldogs will take on the Tigers at Stegeman Coliseum on Feb. 24 and end the regular season on The Plains on March 9. The SEC Tournament is back in Nashville, Tennessee (March 13-17).
• Georgia announced a ramped-up, non-conference slate earlier this summer. The Bulldogs – who went to Italy to play three-game exhibition junket in July – will open the season Nov. 6 against Oregon in the Naismith Hall of Fame Series in Las Vegas. Ten days later, they will travel to the Bahamas to face Miami, Kansas State and Providence in the Baha Mar Hoops Championship.
• Wake Forest returns a home game to Georgia on Nov. 10, the Bulldogs are on the road against Florida State (Nov. 29) in the ACC-SEC Challenge, and the annual Georgia Tech rivalry returns to Athens on Dec. 5. Mercer, High Point, Mount St. Mary’s, North Florida and Alabama A&M complete a comparatively tedious end-of-December slate.

The second season for women’s coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson is flipped in comparison. The non-conference slate is relatively weak, followed by the always treacherous SEC slate. The Lady Bulldogs were 22-12 last season, which ended in a hard-fought, second-round loss to Iowa in the NCAA tournament.