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April 22, 2009

SEC vs. Big East Challenge: UGA vs. St. John's

The Lexington Herald-Leader (Ht - MemphisDog) gives us a heads up that UGA's participation in the 2009 SEC / Big East Challenge has been confirmed. The Georgia Bulldogs will face St. John's in Madison Square Garden on Dec. 9th. Our game will be the under card to the UConn vs. Kentucky game that will be part of the New York City double header.

The other double header site will be Tampa where UF will face Syracuse and DePaul will meet Mississippi State.

This is the third and final year of the current SEC/Big East/ESPN Contract. The format each year had included two double headers hosted in different cities. Birmingham ('07), Philadelphia ('07), Nashville ('08), and Cincy ('08). Eleven of the SEC schools participated with Arkansas somehow being left out and MSU participating twice.

I'm hoping that the series gets renewed, expanded and adjusted in the future to include more teams per year and a switch to home games instead of neutral site match-ups.

Georgia's known basketball schedule for 2009-2010 include:
Home:
Georgia Tech
Hawaii (tentative)

Away:
Missouri
Virginia Tech

Neutral:
Illinois (Gwinnett)
St. John's (NYC*)
Also a rumored pre-Coach Fox tourney in Hawaii.

PWD


*As correctly pointed out in the comments, this clearly isn't a neutral site game despite the intent of the Big East/SEC Challenge. However, the crowd won't look like a traditional SJU game.

10 comments:

ganitu said...

I don't know that I'd put that SJU game in the neutral site column, that's more of a straight up road game with St John's being in NYC.

Anonymous said...

Can we play them in baseball instead?

Jacob said...

Wouldn't our known home and away games also include the teams from the East? One home and one away?

Dawg19 said...

Either way...this is great exposure. Fox has to love this.

Anonymous said...

Jacob, the list is just OOC games

ky_dawg said...

I was hoping Georgia would play the Louisville Cardinals.

PTC DAWG said...

No JACOB, this being Fox's first year, he is spared having to play the SEC slate. It's better for everyone that way. Look for a few more patsies to round out the schedule. :)

Anonymous said...

Playing in NY should help with recruiting

NM said...

I would think playing Illinois in Gwinnett would be no more neutral than playing SJU at MSG, since the SJU game is part of a double-header and there will be a ton of UK and UConn fans there (I would guess). For UGA-Illinois, I would hope it will be all Georgia people.

Tito Sanchez said...

I didn't see you note that the game is on ESPN 2 paul. And NM, the difference would be we don't play any homes games at Gwinnett Arena. St. John's on the other hand plays several, if not all, of their home games in MSG.

 
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