The men return from exams to host Wofford on Saturday afternoon at 2:00, and they’ll follow it up with a game on the 22nd against Texas A&M Corpus Christi. The schedule’s fairly light until Missouri comes to town after the New Year, and while we can’t take anything for granted with this team, one would hope they can finish 2008 with a 10-3 record before things really heat up in January.

The women also return to action after a pair of ugly losses to Georgia Tech and Rutgers. They’ll head to UAB on Saturday for a 7:00 game in Birmingham. The UAB game will be a homecoming for Alabama natives Jasmine Lee and Meredith Mitchell. The Lady Dogs will then host Clemson on Monday night at the Gwinnett Arena. Georgia is a host school for the NCAA Tournament this spring, and they have to play at least one game on the Gwinnett court in order to host games there.

On a semi-related note, this is a really good weekend for college hoops. There are no fewer than five big national games between ranked teams. This is one of the tradeoffs we talk about when the topic of playoffs comes up. College basketball’s emphasis on the postseason means that most casual fans can safely ignore a weekend of good hoops like this one, but it also means that we get more interesting regular season matchups more often since a loss won’t sink the season. Rather than an early season process of elimination, these big December nonconference games serve as measuring sticks for teams tuning themselves up for the more meaningful conference schedules.