Oklahoma basketball: Sooners host Vanderbilt in 2019 Big 12/SEC Challenge

Oklahoma basketball will play host to Vanderbilt in the 2019 Big 12/SEC Challenge.

The Big 12 Conference on Thursday announced the schedule for the annual men’s hoops showdown between teams from the Big 12 and the Southeastern Conference.

All ten Big 12 teams will participate. All of the SEC teams, with the exception of Missouri, LSU, Georgia and Mississippi, will take part in the 2019 inter-conference challenge series.

This will be the third meeting all-time between Oklahoma and Vanderbilt in men’s basketball and the first time the two schools have played each other on the hardwood since 1994. Vanderbilt is 2-0 against the Sooners.

Oklahoma Sooners Basketball

The Big 12 holds a 29-21 advantage in the five seasons that the Big 12/SEC Challenge has been held. The Big 12 was the winner in the first three years of the Big 12/SEC Challenge. The two conferences split the 10 games in 2017, and the SEC won outright for the first time in 2018.

Oklahoma is 3-2 in its five games as part of the Challenge series. The Sooners defeated Missouri, LSU (when Ben Simmons was there) and Texas A&M. OU has lost its last two Challenge games, though, losing big at home to Florida, in 2017, and last season at Alabama.

In his seven seasons as head coach at Oklahoma, Lon Kruger’s teams are 8-9 against current teams in the SEC and 6-5 against teams that were members of the SEC at the time the game was played (current SEC members Texas A&M and Missouri were previously in the Big 12).

All 10 games in the 2019 Big 12/SEC Challenge will be played on Jan. 26. This will be the fourth straight season that all of the games have been played on the same date.

Five of the games in season No. 6 of the Challenge will pair two teams that participated in last season’s NCAA Men’s Tournament, and nine of the matchups will include at least one NCAA Tournament team from a year ago.