Whenever it gets to the ACC, Notre Dame’s annual hoops itinerary is guaranteed to include stops in Boston and Atlanta.
The Irish’s primary basketball partners in an 18-game league schedule will be Boston College and Georgia Tech, the league announced Thursday at the end of its fall meetings.
Once Notre Dame announced on Sept. 12 it was ACC-bound, schedule re-shuffling was inevitable. The result was this: Every year, every team will play every league opponent at least once. There are then guaranteed home-and-away series with the primary partners — in the Irish’s case, the Eagles and the Yellow Jackets.
And then there are two other home-and-away series with rotating opponents, with five home-only and five-road only opponents rounding out the slate. In its release, the ACC said the two primary partner format “preserves competitive balance and builds upon traditional rivalries while providing the opportunity to create new ones.”
The ACC basketball tournament will be a Wednesday through Sunday affair with the addition of Notre Dame, Syracuse and Pittsburgh. Three games will take place on Wednesday and four will take place on both Thursday and Friday before semifinals and the championship on the weekend.
Less impactful to Notre Dame was the league’s decision to keep an eight-game football schedule for 2013 and beyond, though the five-games-per-year commitment with the Irish was the driving force behind that.
“The addition of Notre Dame gives us an opportunity to reinforce a number of conference rivalries in basketball and Olympic sports while also giving our schools greater flexibility in non-conference football scheduling,” ACC commissioner John Swofford said in a release.
“With Pitt, Syracuse and Notre Dame joining us, it is an exciting time in our league and our schools have made decisions that position us extremely well for the future.”
The ACC’s primary basketball partners are as follows:
Boston College: Notre Dame and Syracuse
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Clemson: Florida State and Georgia Tech
Duke: North Carolina and Wake Forest
Florida State: Clemson and Miami
Georgia Tech: Clemson and Notre Dame
Maryland: Pitt and Virginia
Miami: Florida State and Virginia Tech
North Carolina: Duke and NC State
NC State: North Carolina and Wake Forest
Notre Dame: Boston College and Georgia Tech
Pitt: Maryland and Syracuse
Syracuse: Boston College and Pitt
Virginia: Maryland and Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech: Miami and Virginia
Wake Forest: Duke and NC State