For the past eight college basketball season, the Florida Gators have faced a Big 12 opponent as part of the Big 12/SEC Challenge, but that will change next year as ACC and SEC are grouping up with ESPN to bring a new series to the college hoops world: The ACC/SEC Challenge.
Both the men’s and women’s teams will get to participate and the challenge will run from 2023-24 until at least 2025-26 when Texas and Oklahoma join the Southeastern Conference. The ACC, SEC and ESPN announced the series on Monday, and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey provided a comment on the agreement.
“We are excited women’s and men’s basketball student-athletes will have the opportunity to compete with their colleagues from the ACC as we initiate a new Basketball Challenge experience,” Sankey said. “I appreciate the collaboration of Jim Phillips and the ACC members, along with our broadcast partner ESPN, to make possible the SEC/ACC Basketball Challenge which will provide our fans with exciting basketball early in the 2023-24 season. I also thank the Big 12 for the many great challenge games we experienced together in past years.”
Each of the 28 games will be aired on ESPN’s platform, but there aren’t too many details on the specifics of things just yet. The agreement does bring the ACC/Big Ten Challenge to an end, meaning the series taking place this week will be the last. the final SEC/Big 12 Challenge takes place in January.
Of course, Florida has its own yearly matchup with Florida State, which is in the ACC, so this won’t be entirely new to the Gators. It opens up the door for matchups with national powerhouses such as Duke and North Carolina, and sets up a potential in-state rivalry matchup with Miami.
All in all, the ACC presents better matchup opportunities for UF down the road, which means more national attention for Todd Golden’s team.
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