ESPN unveiled its broadcast schedule for the 2024-25 women’s basketball ACC/SEC Challenge on Monday, and the Blue Devils will appropriately face the defending national champions on national television.
Duke travels to South Carolina to play against the Gamecocks on Thursday, December 5. The game, which tips off at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, will be aired on ESPN.
The Blue Devils enter 2024-25 off the most impressive season in the Kara Lawson era. In her third full season as the Duke head coach, Lawson led the team to the Sweet 16 after a second-round upset of the 2-seed Ohio State Buckeyes.
Lawson retained the team’s four leading scorers, including ACC Sixth Player of the Year Oluchi Okananwa, and added five-star freshman Toby Fournier, who already gained social-media attention for dunking in practice. That’s not even mentioning Maryland transfer Riley Nelson, a former five-star prospect from the Class of 2023 who committed to Duke back in April.
There won’t be a harder challenge on the schedule than the Gamecocks, however. South Carolina has won three of the past seven national championships under head coach Dawn Staley, and the Gamecocks have lost nine games over the past five seasons (including a perfect 38-0 record in 2023-24).
https://twitter.com/DukeWBB/status/1838309653492699299
The Thursday battle with the Gamecocks will be Duke’s second consecutive night on ESPN’s national stage. The men’s basketball team hosts the Auburn Tigers the night before on the same network.