ACC reveals men’s, women’s basketball tournaments slated for both Greensboro and Charlotte (2024)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WGHP) — The Atlantic Coast Conference has revealed the planned sites for dozens of future ACC tournaments, all planned for cities across North Carolina.

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips spoke Thursday at the Bank of America Tower in Charlotte, outlining much of the conference’s plan for the rest of the decade.

Following the 2024 ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament set for the Greensboro Coliseumfrom March 6 to 10, Phillips said that the tournament will return to Greensboro in 2025 before moving to the Spectrum Center in Charlotte in 2027. This will mark only the ACC’s second women’s basketball tournament to take place outside of Greensboro since 2000.

The 2024 ACC Men’s Basketball tournament will take place at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. from March 12 to 16 and will remain in North Carolina for the next five years beginning in 2025. It will be hosted at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte for 2025, 2026 and 2028 and at the Greensboro Coliseum for 2027 and 2029. This will be the tournament’s longest consecutive run in one state since North Carolina hosted the men’s tournaments from 1990 to 2000.

The ACC Men’s and Women’s Soccer Tournaments will take place at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary from 2024 through 2029.

The ACC Men’s and Women’s Tennis Tournaments will be held at the Cary Tennis Park from 2024 through 2029.

The ACC Rowing Tournament will take place at Lake Weeler Park in Raleigh in 2024, 2026, 2027, 2029 and 2030.

The ACC Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse Tournaments will take place at the American Legion Memorial Stadium in Charlotte from 2024 through 2028.

The ACC Baseball Tournament will take place at Truist Field in Charlotte in 2024, 2026 and 2028 and at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park in 2025, 2027 and 2029.

The ACC Women’s Golf Tournament will be held at Porters Neck Country Club in Wilmington in 2024 and then at the Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro in 2025, 2027 and 2029. The tournament will be held at as-of-yet unannounced locations belonging to McConnell Golf Properties in 2026 and 2028.

Tournament Town: Greensboro, N.C.

After the ACC’s announcement, Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan and Greensboro Sports Foundation President and CEO Richard Beard spoke from the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, which has been the ACC basketball tournaments’ most frequent host over the years.

According to Vaughan, Greensboro was “very fortunate” to be named host to 40% of the tournaments announced Thursday.

“We pride ourselves on being Tournament Town, and a big part of Tournament Town is ACC sports as well as all of the other sports that we attract here to the City of Greensboro, so Tournament Town is alive and well,” Vaughan said. “We are excited about what is coming up.”

She did, however, voice disappointment that the 2028 ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament, which will align with the tournament’s 75th anniversary, will be held in Charlotte.

“We played the 50th anniversary here in Greensboro and did a phenomenal job,” Vaughan said. “They were founded here in Greensboro. This is really what the ACC is all about, and to play it somewhere else I think, to me, is extremely heartbreaking.”

Yet the following year, 2029, brings plenty of reasons for the city to celebrate with several major competitions coming to Gate City, chief among them being the first World University Games in the United States since 1993. That same year, Greensboro will host the ACC Men’s and Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships, the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament, the ACC Women’s Golf Tournament and the AAU Junior Olympics.”

“That year is an epic year for Greensboro and Tournament Town and our sports tourism,” Beard said of 2029.

ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament

The 2027 ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament in Charlotte will be the second time that the tournament has been held in Greensboro since 2000, the only other instance being 2017 when the tournament was held at the HTC Center in Conway, South Carolina.

Phillips signaled the move on Oct. 25, 2023. When asked if the ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament was committed to Greensboro long-term or if a rotating model was possible, Phillips said at the time that Greensboro has been “a wonderful home for the women’s tournament and the men’s tournament” but that they were also looking at Charlotte.

The conference notably moved its headquartersfrom its longtime home in Greensboro to Charlotte in 2023.

“We will certainly continue to populate Greensboro with our championship, but we’re in a new home, as well, in Charlotte, and we want to take advantage of this world-class city,” Phillips said at the time.

He added that the tournament has contractual agreements in North Carolina to receive funding, and the ACC intends to honor those commitments.

ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament

Unlike the women’s tournament, the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament has stayed on the move throughout the years with Greensboro accounting for just under half (11 out of 24) of all tournaments since 2000.

That said, with the addition of Thursday’s announcements, the Greensboro Coliseum will hold onto the bragging rights for having hosted more ACC Men’s Basketball Tournaments than any other city.

The men’s basketball tournament has been held in Greensboro 29 times and in North Carolina 55 times since the conference launched in 1954. For the ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament, that count is 24 times in Greensboro and 38 times in North Carolina since launching in 1978.

West Coast expansion

The last year has been one of many changes for the now somewhat bizarrely named Atlantic Coast Conference, now featuring six teams that do not border the Atlantic Ocean.

In 2023, the conference approved the addition of three new member schools:Stanford University in California, theUniversity of California, BerkeleyandSouthern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. These add to three other universities in non-coastal states that joined the ACC in 2013 and 2014: the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, the University of Lousiville in Kentucky and the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.

Stanford and Cal both reside on the other side of Interstate 40 in California. They come to the ACC from the Pac-12 Conference. SMU is located in Texas and comes to ACC by way of the American Athletic Conference.

Those three additions to the ACC are just the latest examples of the regionality that once defined college athletics being tossed aside as a consequence of massive conference realignment.

While the additions will increase the league’s revenue, they will also create some logistical challenges related to travel and scheduling. Geography is chief among those concerns.

Looking past the logistics of traveling across the United States for games, the ACC also finds itself with a numbers issue as the conference will have 18 member institutions once Stanford, Cal and SMU officially join in 2024.

Phillips previously expressed doubt about the league inviting all 18 teams to the ACC Tournament.

“As it relates to our other championships and where will they be in the future, I think that remains to be determined,” Phillips said. “And as it relates to the scheduling part like for basketball, it varies a little bit because we’re playing 18 games on the women’s side, 20 games on the men’s side, so that all kind of factors into ultimately — I don’t know that we would invite 18 teams to an ACC men’s or women’s basketball championship.”

Under the current format of the ACC Tournament, all 15 member institutions are invited and seeded in order based on their record in conference play. Seeds 1-4 get a double bye and are automatically placed in the quarterfinals. Seeds 5-9 get a single bye and are automatically placed in the second round. Seeds 10-15 receive no bye and must play one another in the first round.