For the fourth consecutive year, women’s basketball teams from the ACC and SEC will meet on the hardwood in an annual cross-conference challenge.
And this season, the headlining games are on Tobacco Road.
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North Carolina will host LSU in Carmichael Arena on Dec. 2 and South Carolina will travel to Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium on Dec. 3 as part of the ACC-SEC Challenge. Other marquee matchups include Louisville traveling to Texas, and Vanderbilt hosting Notre Dame in a Sweet 16 rematch.
Other games include Miami at Florida, NC State at Ole Miss, Tennessee at Virginia Tech, Oklahoma at Syracuse and Clemson at Kentucky. That last matchup will be a reunion between two coaching staffs — Clemson’s Shawn Poppie worked under Kentucky’s Kenny Brooks at Virginia Tech.
Here’s the full schedule, with times and TV designations still to be determined:
Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2026
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Thursday, Dec. 3, 2026
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Tennessee at Virginia Tech
The SEC and ACC split the series in the first season, but the SEC has won the challenge each year since, taking victories in 13 of 16 games last season.
Because the SEC has 16 teams and the ACC has 18, two squads from the latter do not participate in the annual challenge. Sitting out this year is Pitt and Boston College, who both made coaching changes after finishing at the bottom of the standings last season.
For UNC and LSU, this will be the third meeting with the Tigers holding 2-0 edge. LSU has never played the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill. The Tigers won a neutral site game over the Heels in Myrtle Beach in 2016, and beat them in the 2008 Elite Eight in New Orleans.
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This will also mark the first head-to-head coaching matchup between Courtney Banghart and Kim Mulkey. The two didn’t matchup in their previous stops at Princeton and Baylor. Both coaches led their teams to the Sweet 16 last season, where Mulkey’s Tigers lost on a buzzer beater to Duke and Banghart’s Tar Heels were outmatched by UConn.
Duke and South Carolina have much more recent history. They have played five times since Kara Lawson became the head coach of the Blue Devils in 2020, with the Gamecocks winning every matchup. Most notably, Duke lost a nail-biter to South Carolina in the 2025 Elite Eight in Birmingham, Alabama, falling by four points. Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks blew the Blue Devils out last season in a neutral site game in Las Vegas, 83-66. South Carolina and Duke were both the regular season champions of their conferences last season.
Texas and Louisville last played in the 2022-23 season, actually matching up twice — once in non-conference play and again in the NCAA Tournament. Texas won both games.
Vanderbilt versus Notre Dame is sure to be a star-studded matchup with a pair of All-Americans in Hannah Hidalgo and Mikayla Blakes facing off. Blakes, who was named SEC Player of the Year, led the nation in scoring last season with 27 points per game as a sophomore. Hidalgo was third nationally in scoring and first in steals while claiming her second ACC Player of the Year honor.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: South Carolina at Duke headlines ACC-SEC women’s basketball challenge
