Daily e-Edition
Evening e-Edition
Sign up for email newsletters
Sign up for email newsletters
Daily e-Edition
Evening e-Edition
Trending:
UCF will make its first trip to Memorial Coliseum as the Knights travel to Nashville to take on Vanderbilt in a non-conference men’s basketball game Nov. 20.
It’s the second consecutive season in which UCF has faced the Commodores.
The two programs previously met at Addition Financial Arena on Nov. 8, 2025, with Vanderbilt coming away with a 105-93 win over the Knights.
Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington hinted that the scheduling deal with UCF would be a home-and-home following the game.
“We did a deal … a home-and-home. It’s a great series,” Byington said. “They’re in a great league and I respect (UCF coach) Johnny (Dawkins) a lot.”
Dawkins has made no secret of his preference for a tougher non-conference schedule, particularly since the program moved to the Big 12.
“We talked about what would be the right fit for this group because every team is different,” he said in March. “We felt that as challenging as possible would be beneficial for us. I thought our guys had a taste of what it’s going to be like throughout the season for us.”
This is the seventh consecutive season in which UCF has scheduled an SEC opponent. It’s also the 10th time in the past 11 seasons under Dawkins that the Knights have faced a foe from the SEC.
UCF faced Duke and LSU in exhibition games before opening its nonconference schedule against Hofstra, Vanderbilt, Texas A&M and Pittsburgh. Hofstra, Vanderbilt and Texas A&M qualified for the NCAA Tournament this season.
The Knights earned an at-large berth to the tournament in 2026 for the first time since the 2018-19 season. They lost to UCLA in the first round in Philadelphia.
Tipoff time and television broadcast information will be announced later.
Matt Murschel can be reached at [email protected]
Copyright 2026 Orlando Sentinel. All rights reserved. The use of any content on this website for the purpose of training artificial intelligence systems, algorithms, machine learning models, text and data mining, or similar use is strictly prohibited without explicit written consent.
