The UGA men’s basketball 2017-18 SEC schedule was announced by the league office on Thursday and includes five Saturday home dates along with a New Year’s Eve matchup on the road at Kentucky.

 
“I think this schedule is great for our fans because we have a significant number of Saturday games,” head coach Mark Fox said. “Certainly having more Saturday games is more fan-friendly. Hopefully, it will help give our football program some good recruiting weekends too.”
 
 
Georgia will host Alabama (Jan. 6), South Carolina (Jan. 13), Auburn (Feb. 10), Tennessee (Feb. 17) and LSU (Feb. 24) for Saturday matchups at the newly renovated Stegeman Coliseum this winter. The Bulldogs’ remaining home dates include Ole Miss on Wednesday, Jan. 3; Arkansas on Tuesday, Jan. 23; Florida on Tuesday, Jan. 30; and Texas A&M on Wednesday, Feb. 28.
 
 
The SEC slate begins with a Sunday, Dec. 31 trip to Lexington to face Kentucky.
 
 
“You know there are going to be 18 games against very solid teams on our league schedule,” Fox said. “No matter what order they’re placed in, there’s going to be a lot of great, competitive games.”
 
 
The rest of Georgia’s road slate includes trips to the Bulldogs’ five home-and-home foes – Auburn, Florida, LSU, South Carolina and Tennessee – as well as contests at Missouri, Mississippi State, and Vanderbilt.
 
 
Times and television assignments for all 14 SEC teams will be announced at a later date.
 
 
The Bulldogs will welcome back nine of their top-10 scorers from last season when Georgia finished 19-15 and earned a postseason bid for the fifth time in head coach Mark Fox’s eight seasons in Athens. Headlining the returnees is two-time, consensus All-SEC forward Yante Maten. A senior from Pontiac, Mich., Maten enters the 2017-18 campaign as the league’s active leader in career points, rebounds, and blocked shots.