Stanford, Cal given first ACC schedules
Stanford’s and Cal’s reality in the ACC was marked by another milestone Thursday.
Both schools announced their women’s basketball opponents and schedule format for their first two ACC seasons, which will begin in 2024-25. The two schools will move from the Pac-12 to the ACC on July 1.
Each ACC school will play an 18-game conference schedule that includes eight home games and eight road games with 16 of the teams, and each will be assigned one travel partner with which they play each other at home and on the road.
Stanford and Cal will be travel partners and see each other twice a season. What being a traveling partner actually entails is unclear; on Thursday, spokespeople at both schools did not know what that would look like as far as charters or other travel details. SMU, which also is entering the ACC in July, will be paired with Pittsburgh as a travel partner.
In 2024-25, Stanford and Cal will each host Pittsburgh, Florida State, Miami, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Syracuse and Boston College. They each will travel to Duke, Clemson, Wake Forest, SMU, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Louisville and Notre Dame.
Those schedules will inverse for 2025-26.
The first season of ACC play will bring to the Bay Area current Top 25 teams in N.C. State and Syracuse and two teams in North Carolina and Florida State that have been ranked this season. The road schedule will pit the Cardinal and Bears against current Top 25 squads Virginia Tech, Louisville and Notre Dame.
Nonconference opponents and the full schedule with dates and times will be announced at a later date.
This is the first time Stanford will change conferences since Tara VanDerveer’s team transitioned from the PacWest to the then-Pac-10 for the 1986-87 season. The Cardinal won the final Pac-12 regular-season title this season and will leave the conference with 27 regular-season titles.
The Pac-12 tournament begins in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Stanford will be the top seed, and Cal will be the No. 8 seed.