Report: Florida basketball to add game vs. West Virginia to 2018-19 slate

Basketball

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The Florida Gators‘ already difficult 2018-19 schedule looks to be getting even tougher. Just weeks after it was announced that Florida had added Michigan State and Butler to its slate next season, it appears as if the West Virginia Mountaineers will be the latest challenging nonconference opponent to take on the Gators a few months from now.

Jon Rothstein reported Wednesday that Florida has supplanted Indiana in the 2018 Jimmy V. Classic and will face West Virginia at Madison Square Garden as part of a two-game doubleheader with Oklahoma-Notre Dame serving as the other matchup.

The Gators have not confirmed the game at this time.Florida is 5-3 all-time against West Virginia on the hardwood with consecutive dominant victories and a 2-1 record since the turn of the century.

There are no other nonconference games announced for 2018-19 at this time, though one should expect Florida to once again compete in the Orange Bowl Basketball Classic and SEC-Big 12 Challenge at a minimum. The Gators are also expected to return to the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament, which takes in the Bahamas around Thanksgiving. Among the teams participating in that event are Oklahoma, Stanford, Virginia and Wisconsin.

UF was supposed to compete in a four-team barnstorming event beginning on Dec. 14, 2018. The event was to feature Michigan State, North Carolina and Texas and be hosted in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. It has not been addressed in years after initially being reported, and with the MSU game being contested in Gainesville, it looks to potentially be over.