On Tuesday, Mississippi State women's basketball learned their SEC opponents for the 2026 slate. The Bulldogs will face the Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Missouri, and Vanderbilt at home while traveling to play South Carolina, Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Arkansas, and Ole Miss. They'll play the Tennessee Lady Vols both home and away.
Conference Destinations Are Set ✅#HailState pic.twitter.com/1bEFIM7eJp
— Mississippi State Women's Basketball (@HailStateWBK) June 17, 2025
There's not much to say about the schedule itself. The road slate looks quite treacherous, but you still get a few high-profile opponents in Starkville. Plus, State's more winnable games come at home, which should help them when it comes to prevailing in true toss-ups.
If there's anything that does somewhat standout, it's that State won't play Ole Miss twice during the season, only facing the Rebels in Oxford for 2026. That doesn't come as too much of a shock, though, as the teams only played once in the regular season in 2025 too.
Last year with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma to the league, the SEC began a new conference scheduling format, one that does not feature any permanent home and home series between rival schools. Teams play 14 of the other SEC opponents once with one rotating team being played both home and away as a part of a 16-game league slate.
The result was the end of MSU's rivalry series with Ole Miss being a biannual affair. Last season was the first time (that wasn't impacted by COVID) that the two rivals didn't play twice in a season since the early '90s, and even most of the years prior to that featured a home and home series.
No change was made for 2026, as the SEC continues to miss the mark when it comes to scheduling for women's basketball.
The SEC is only hurting itself with women's basketball scheduling
In a time where women's basketball is growing in popularity, with multiple SEC programs contributing to that growth, the SEC is failing to continue raising the profile of the sport thanks to a bland scheduling format.
Rivalries are a key part of sports. They're vital to getting fans engaged. No matter the sport, fanbases can rally around beating their rival. Having rivalry games played just once a season in a sport with as many regular season games as women's basketball only diminishes them. You're saying they aren't an important part of the sport, which hurts growing women's hoops, especially as rivalries remain a priority in men's college basketball.
Rivalry games are something fanbases look forward too every season. They're more likely to attend or tune-in to watch those matchups. If you're the SEC, why would you not want more games on the schedule that will sell more tickets and get more viewership? You're just losing money.
There's a very obvious reason why the SEC won't do permanent rivals for women's basketball, though they'd never come out and admit it. Simply put, no one in the league wants to be the unlucky soul that's forced to play South Carolina twice annually. The teams that would make most sense to pair with the Gamecocks would likely be taking a pair of Ls before the games are every played.
It's an understandable concern, though I don't see why a program as proud as Tennessee wouldn't jump at the chance to play an annual series with the league's current leader. That's a matchup that would make a ton of sense, and you could still have reasonable rivalry matchups throughout the remainder of the SEC.
There is another alternative, however. What if the yearly home and homes were based on creating the best matchups? Rather than rotating through opponents, the league could instead prioritize pairing up their best programs to play home and home in a given year.
In a sense, the league made an attempt at this last season, pairing South Carolina with Texas and LSU with Tennessee to create huge games at the start of a new era for the conference. But this year, LSU and Texas is the only home and home series with any major intrigue, with the other series seemingly randomized.
Why not have those teams at the top see each other twice each year? You'd be guaranteeing more eyeballs on the sport. As for the remaining home and homes in a given season, you would prioritize as many rivalries as possible or at least give each team a nearby matchup fans can travel to. As SEC programs rise to and fall from prominence, you'd simply adjust which teams find their way into high-profile home and homes.
There's no need to have a set rotation. Go into each year prioritizing getting the best possible games. It's a simple solution to continue growing the sport of women's basketball. Fans want games worth getting excited about. The current format fails to provide that.