DESTIN, Fla. -- Starting in the 2015-16 men's college basketball season, SEC teams will add three permanent opponents to their conference schedules.
As in the past, SEC teams will play a total of 18 conference games. Each school will play each of the 13 other SEC teams at least once. They will play home-and-home series with all three permanent opponents and two more home-and-home series that will be scheduled on a rotating basis.
SEC associate commissioner for men's basketball Mark Whitworth announced the scheduling changes at the conference's spring meetings on Thursday.
"We felt like this would be something, based on the feedback that we've heard, particularly from the ADs and the head coaches, to get some of these traditional opponents in everybody's arena on a more consistent basis," Whitworth said.
Among the permanent rivalries protected in the new scheduling format are some that should come as absolutely no surprise: Alabama versus Auburn, Florida versus Georgia, Kentucky versus Florida, Tennessee versus Vanderbilt, Ole Miss versus Mississippi State.
There are also some new ones -- particularly those featuring relative SEC newcomers Texas A&M and Missouri -- that league officials hope will develop into strong rivalries.
"It's always an interesting and lively discussion on how permanent opponents might be assigned and finalized in any sport. And I would say the same was true in men's basketball," Whitworth said. "You can see a pretty good blend of traditional rivals and then an opportunity to maybe create new rivalries there."
The SEC recently concluded a three-year scheduling cycle in which each team played an 18-game schedule that featured one permanent rival and four rotating opponents for home-and-home series.
Whitworth expects the new format to remain in place for a longer period of time.
"I think the intent of the membership is that this would be something that would be done for a number of years and not just one year," he said.
The SEC has not yet released its conference schedule for the upcoming men's basketball season, and Whitworth said it's possible some teams might play single road games against conference opponents they visited last season. But he emphasized this will be an entirely new scheduling cycle, and that the home and road trips will balance out for each team.
"We've made it pretty clear that we just finished a three-year cycle and that this new format will start a new cycle," Whitworth said. "And so there may be some occasion where a team played another institution just once and they could possibly end up again in that scenario on the road again. But just know that over time that will balance out and every team will have an equal number of home and road games."