Michigan-UCF hoops agree to home-and-home series starting this year

The Michigan and University of Central Florida men’s basketball teams have scheduled a home-and-home series starting this year, UCF’s program announced on Thursday.

The Wolverines will host the Knights at Crisler Center in 2020 and travel to Addition Financial Arena in Orlando, Florida, in 2021. The matchup dates are to be determined.

UCF went 16-14 last season and finished tied for eighth in the American Athletic Conference with a 7-11 mark. The Knights return their top two leading scorers from a year ago in fifth-year senior forward Collin Smith (12.6 points) and sophomore guard Darin Green Jr. (10.1 points).

UCF is led by fifth-year coach Johnny Dawkins, whose son Aubrey played two seasons at Michigan from 2014-16.

The series will mark the first meetings between the two basketball programs.

In addition to UCF, Michigan’s non-conference slate will include home contests against Southern Utah (Nov. 27), Oakland (Dec. 21) and Ball State (Dec. 29) as well as a road game at Oregon (Nov. 14), according to contracts obtained by The Detroit News through a Freedom of Information Act request. The Wolverines are also slated to play in the Empire Classic (Nov. 19-20) in New York along with Baylor, Villanova and N.C. State.

The home-and-home series is the second the Wolverines have signed since Juwan Howard took over as coach last year. Michigan also agreed to a three-game series with Kentucky that will start in 2021 after the London matchup was postponed until 2022.

jhawkins@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @jamesbhawkins