College basketball season is a little under two months away, and preparation is in progress for the Southeast Missouri State men's and women's teams.

The Redhawks are now able to prepare game strategies with the 2015-16 schedules being released on Sept. 16.

With this being the first season for men's coach Rick Ray and women's coach Rekah Patterson, neither participated much in the selections of their team's nonconference opponents.

Former men's basketball coach Dickey Nutt was fired following last season and women's coach Ty Margenthaler resigned.

"Obviously we got the job late, so we were under some constraints because we had to fulfill a full nonconference schedule in a short amount of time," Ray said.

The men's team will open up its regular season by traveling to Dayton, Ohio, to face Dayton. Six of the Redhawks seven first games are on the road.

The men had an overall record of 13-17 and were 7-9 in Ohio Valley Conference play last season.

The Redhawks will compete in a nationally-televised game this season when they welcome OVC opponent Murray State at 8 p.m on Feb. 4.

"For this being my first year, the schedule was already done and I didn't want to make too many changes," Patterson said of the women's schedule.

She explained her overall excitement of the schedule due to the recent renovations of the Show Me Center and her and the team's overall mission to pursue students and the general public to pack the student section and provide as much support as possible.

"We are going to work really, really hard to encourage our students to come and market to them so they can know that we have games, who we are playing so they can fit it into their schedule," Patterson said. "That's the most important thing that I'm excited about when it comes to our schedule."

With the release of the basketball schedules providing players, coaches, students and the overall city of Cape Girardeau with an overview of the upcoming season, the only thing to do now is to wait for November to see how the hard work and strategy pans out for both teams.

The men will play an exhibition game against Missouri S&T on Nov. 7 at the Show Me Center. The Redhawks will start OVC play at the Show Me Center and will face Belmont at noon on Dec. 31.

The women's team will start its season at the Show Me Center with two exhibition games. The first game will be against Oakland City on Nov. 1 and the second against Lindenwood Belleville three days later.

Patterson and her team will start OVC play on the same day the men's team will and will face the same opponent, Belmont, at 2:30 p.m.