The ACC basketball schedule delivered an intriguing, if ominous, first to Georgia Tech.
The Yellow Jackets will play home games against three teams with coaches in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Tech will play at McCamish Pavilion against Louisville (coached by Rick Pitino), North Carolina (Roy Williams) and Syracuse (Jim Boeheim) as part of its nine-game ACC home schedule. The conference released the entire schedule of ACC games for the next two seasons Tuesday.
Besides those three teams, Tech also will play Boston College, Clemson, Florida State, N.C. State and Syracuse at home.
The Jackets will play home-and-home games against Clemson, Notre Dame, North Carolina and Wake Forest. The Tigers and Fighting Irish are Tech’s two permanent partners.
Tech’s road games, aside from the four home-and-homes, will be against Duke, Miami, Pittsburgh, Virginia and Virginia Tech.
“This schedule’s going to be fantastic for us,” said Rick Thorpe, associate athletic director for sales and fan experience.
The Tech-Syracuse game will be the first meeting between the schools on Tech’s campus. Similarly, Louisville has not played at Tech since February 1991. The Cardinals also played four holiday tournament games against Tech at the Georgia Dome in the ’90s.
The trip to Pittsburgh will be Tech’s first since February 1970, when Whack Hyder was coach.
The league also announced the opponents and the home/road breakdown for the 2015-16 season. In that season, Tech will have home-and-homes with Clemson, Notre Dame, Louisville and Pittsburgh. Duke, Miami, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest will fill out the home schedule, while Boston College, Florida State, North Carolina, N.C. State and Syracuse will be the road-only games.
Next season will be the first for the conference’s 12-year cycle in which, excluding the permanent partners, each team will face the other 12 in home-and-home series twice, road-only games five times and home-only games five times.
The Tech ticket office will begin taking deposits for season tickets for next season at 10 a.m. Wednesday. Pricing and other information will be released in coming weeks, and renewal begins in June.
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