The complete UConn men's basketball schedule was released on Wednesday, featuring a few different twists than previous seasons.

The Huskies will wait until the new year to play their American Athletic Conference opener, visiting South Florida on Jan. 2.

There is a longer than usual holiday break gap between games. The Huskies don't have a single game after Dec. 22 and before entering January. That scheduling change is due to the fact that Selection Sunday is later than usual, taking place on March 17.

UConn also doesn't play a true non-conference road game this season after traveling to both Arizona and Auburn last season. All but one of its top non-conference games will be played at neutral sites — Syracuse (Nov. 15), Oregon or Iowa (Nov. 16), defending national champion Villanova (Dec. 22) at Madison Square Garden in New York, Florida State (Dec. 8) at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.

The trip to Newark will serve as a homecoming game for first-year coach Dan Hurley, a New Jersey native.

Arizona completes its series against UConn by visiting the XL Center in Hartford for a 1 p.m. non-conference game on Dec. 2

The Huskies also have just one official exhibition game, facing former UConn standout Scott Burrell's Southern Connecticut State University, a Division II program, on Nov. 2 in Storrs. They're reportedly playing Harvard in late October in a closed door scrimmage.

UConn eases into the regular season by hosting Morehead State on Nov. 8 and University of Missouri-Kansas City on Nov. 11 in Storrs.

Coming off consecutive losing seasons, the Huskies need all the momentum that they can get before the schedule stiffens.

UConn will get a good idea about where it stands in the AAC in early January when it hosts Central Florida (Jan. 5) and Southern Methodist University (Jan. 10), two of the conference's strongest teams, in consecutive games in Hartford and Storrs, respectively. Then the Huskies embark on a challenging two-game road trip, visiting always tough Cincinnati on Jan. 12 and traveling to Tulsa on Jan. 16.

The regular season ends with three games in March — home vs. South Florida (March 3), home vs. Temple (March 7) and on the road against East Carolina (March 10).

FedExForum in Memphis will host the AAC Championship tournament from March 14-17.