HAMMOND, La. – The Southeastern Louisiana men's basketball program faces a challenging schedule once again in 2013-14 with four Southeastern Conference opponents on the slate coach Jim Yarbrough announced Sunday.

Southeastern travels to three SEC schools, opening up at Missouri. The Lions will make trips to LSU, as well as Arkansas, and face a neutral site contest against Mississippi State in Tupelo, Miss. There are also matchups with Rice, North Texas and Tennessee-Martin.

"It's not an easy schedule with four home contests, a neutral site game with Mississippi State, a couple of Ohio Valley Conference schools, a Summit League school," Yarbrough said. "But I'm not sure this schedule stacks up to last season when you had an Elite Eight team like Florida, an Elite Eight team like Marquette, a great program and team like Wisconsin. We had 11 teams on our schedule that played in the NCAA Tournament or NIT. It was a very formidable schedule on the front part."

ACCA opponent Champion Baptist returns to Hammond once again for the home opener, Nov. 14, but Southeastern's next two home contest are against Western Illinois (Nov. 26) and Southeast Missouri (Dec. 7) before Spring Hill wraps up the non-conference slate (Dec. 30).

The Lions open up conference play with a short two-game swing to McNeese State and Nicholls State. Other road trips include swings to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Houston Baptist, Central Arkansas and Oral Roberts as well as Sam Houston State and Lamar.

Coming to the University Center this season are Northwestern State, Stephen F. Austin, McNeese, Nicholls, Sam Houston and Lamar as well as Southland newcomers New Orleans, Abilene Christian and Incarnate Word.

The Southland Conference Tournament, slated for March 12-15, 2014, will once again be contested at the Merrill Center in Katy, Texas, with the winner receiving the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.