How the new ACC basketball schedule will affect NC teams in 2025-26
As the ACC seeks to improve its NCAA Tournament inclusion, the league announced Wednesday its men’s basketball schedule will shrink by two games in the upcoming season.
Teams will now play an 18-game league format, as opposed to the previous 20-game format, starting in the 2025-26 season. Each program will play 16 of the remaining 17 teams. The schedules will feature one primary home-and-home rivalry and another variable series.
Duke and North Carolina are protected rivals and will play each other at the Smith Center in Chapel Hill and Durham’s Cameron Indoor Stadium. Meanwhile, N.C. State and Wake Forest will play at Raleigh’s Lenovo Center and Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Winston-Salem.
That means, though, that for the first time since 1919, rivals N.C. State and UNC will not play home-and-home next season.
League play is set to begin in late December and end the first Saturday in March. That’s a change from the 20-game format, when league games began in December’s first weekend.
The change allows each team room to schedule two more nonconference games, which some will use to play more high-profile contests against other power conference teams in an effort to improve their resumes and be in better position to get an NCAA Tournament at-large bid.
The variable partner will be determined on a year-by-year basis.
This is similar to the format, with the same rivalry pairings, the ACC introduced for women’s basketball in 2024-25. The women’s schedule, however, does not include an additional home-and-home series.
The ACC moved to 20-game schedules for men’s basketball during the 2019-20 season. It previously played 18-game conference schedules during the 2012-13 through 2018-19 seasons. At the time, however, there were fewer league members which allowed multiple home-and-home matchups.
This move comes after what conference officials called “continued strategic assessment,” during which they worked with athletic directors, coaches, consultants and TV partners to determine the best path forward. Among the external consultants, the ACC worked with statistical analysts to “examine the conference’s basketball product, metrics and scheduling.”
Even after growing to 18 teams, the ACC landed only four teams in this year’s NCAA Tournament. That’s compared to the SEC getting 14 of its 16 teams in the field.
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said in a statement the conference understands the importance of ACC men’s basketball and ensuring the league is “best positioned for the future.”
Changing the schedule allows teams to play additional non-conference games to boost the league’s postseason resume, Phillips said. The 18-game schedule provides more balance between conference and nonconference games and gives teams other opportunities to play other opponents. In recent years, analysts and bracketologists have criticized the ACC.
No more than five teams have earned a spot in March Madness since 2021, when seven ACC teams made the tournament. At least one ACC team, however, has made the Final Four in four consecutive seasons. Beginning in 2022, four different teams (Duke, North Carolina, N.C. State and Miami) have represented the ACC in the Final Four.
In addition to scheduling changes, the ACC will work with its member schools to strengthen its marketing and branding work, including efforts to bolster ACC Network coverage.
“This decision reflects our on-going prioritization to do what’s best for ACC men’s basketball,” Phillips said, “and we appreciate the thoughtfulness of our membership and the support from our television partners.”
This story was originally published May 7, 2025 at 5:38 PM.
