BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Two Saturday matinees televised on CBS at Humphrey Coliseum will highlight the Mississippi State men’s basketball team’s 2018-19 Southeastern Conference slate, which the league office announced Wednesday.
MSU will face Ole Miss (noon, Jan. 12) and Kentucky (noon, Feb. 9) as part of the SEC’s six-game package with CBS.
MSU will be featured nine times on the SEC Network with home games versus Auburn (7:30 p.m., Jan. 26), Alabama (8 p.m., Feb. 12), South Carolina (5 p.m., Feb. 23), and Missouri (6 p.m., Feb. 26) scheduled to be televised.
MSU also will have six games on ESPN’s flex scheduling package. In that scenario, the station — ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, or SEC Network — will be determined seven to 10 days prior to tipoff. Those matchups include home games against Florida (6 p.m., Jan. 15), LSU (8 p.m., Feb. 6), and Texas A&M (1 p.m., March 9).
ESPNU will broadcast MSU’s SEC opener at South Carolina (8 p.m., Jan. 8).
While MSU will have a solid presence on television, all 18 of the Ole Miss men’s basketball team’s games will air on national TV.
The Rebels will be showcased 14 times on SEC Network. Three other conference games will be broadcast on the ESPN family of networks. All of the games included in the ESPN package (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, and SEC Network) also will be available through the ESPN app, which is accessible on computers, smartphones, tablets and connected devices to fans who receive their video subscription from an affiliated provider.
Ole Miss will open SEC play at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 5, at Vanderbilt. The SEC Network will broadcast the game.
Ole Miss then will play three of the next four games at home. The first SEC game in The Pavilion is a midweek matchup versus Auburn (6 p.m., Jan. 9) on the SEC Network.
Alabama will open SEC play against Kentucky at noon Saturday, Jan. 5. ESPN will broadcast the game.
The SEC tournament will be March 13-17 at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee.
Kentucky (No. 2), LSU (No. 5), Vanderbilt (No. 9), Florida (No. 18), Alabama (No. 20), Mississippi State (No. 22), and Arkansas (No. 25) have recruiting classes that rank among the top 25 of ESPN’s RecruitingNation Class Rankings for 2018. Twenty-one of ESPN’s 2018 Top 100 recruits signed with SEC schools, including 13 of the top 50 players.
The SEC is coming off another season that saw it send 10 teams to postseason play in 2018, including a league-record eight received NCAA tournament bids. The league posted its best regular-season non-conference winning percentage (77.4 percent) in more than a decade, a number that includes a 6-4 win in the fifth-annual Big 12/SEC Challenge.
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