Big 12/SEC Pairings Announced

The Big 12 and Southeastern Conferences have announced an annual men’s basketball challenge that will begin during the 2013-14 season.

“The Big 12 is excited to enter into another partnership with the SEC,” said Commissioner Bob Bowlsby. “It will add more quality opponents to our schools’ annually strong non-conference schedules and provide an additional avenue to showcase some outstanding intersectional matchups.”

The majority of the games are scheduled for December 2-6, with three taking place outside the four-day series window due to scheduling issues. In future years, the two conferences will work with ESPN to schedule all games across consecutive days. ESPN will provide exclusive coverage of all 10 games on it networks. Additional components of the challenge, including start times and television broadcast information, will be announced at a later date.

The Challenge includes five teams ranked in an early ESPN.com preseason top 25: No. 1 Kentucky, No. 5 Kansas, No. 7 Florida, No. 11 Oklahoma State and No. 19 Baylor. Two games will pit ranked teams against each other: No. 1 Kentucky vs. No. 19 Baylor and No. 5 Kansas at No. 7 Florida.

This will be the first challenge for Big 12 men’s basketball since a four-year series between the Conference and the Pac-10 from 2007-10. The Big 12 held a 28-20 advantage in games played in that event.