The 2024–25 men’s and women’s basketball schedule was revealed by the ACC yesterday afternoon. Since Cal, Stanford, and SMU will be included for the first time, this year’s announcement is a little more intriguing than the ones from previous years.
We’ve heard a lot about how this would affect education and how frequently teams from the Atlantic coast will need to travel west, but we now have some concrete answers. It appears like the UNC men’s team isn’t having too much of a problem. The females’? Okay, let’s go to it.
Speaking of worse, here’s a look at the women’s basketball schedule:
Home: Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, NC State, Wake Forest, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Notre Dame, Boston College
Away: Duke, Cal, Stanford, SMU, Pitt, Miami, Clemson, Louisville, Syracuse
A shocking development in the UNC women’s schedule is that they will not face NC State twice next season. This also appears to be the case the following season, so at least for now it appears that the UNC/NC State rivalry series has died and we will now see the teams only play each other once in the regular season. The other noticeable detail in the schedule is that the Heels have to travel out west three times to face Cal, Stanford, and SMU. I can’t imagine that Courtney Banghart was super happy when she saw this schedule, but alas, this will be the first Carolina basketball team in the new iteration of the ACC to play three true west coast road games in a season.
All of the ACC teams will have a very entertaining season next year. The three newly admitted institutions undoubtedly receive a raw deal in many respects, but they also consciously chose to enter the conference knowing as much. That may sound sarcastic, but the three schools really required a new location, and there were no Power Five choices that would have greatly facilitated their travels.
This is the state of collegiate athletics, and over the next five to ten years, I don’t think we won’t see a lot more strange and absurd developments.
How do you feel about the basketball schedule for the ACC? Are you anticipating the addition of Cal, Stanford, and SMU?
