South Carolina head coach Daybreak Staley communicates with an official in a first-round faculty basketball recreation in opposition to Norfolk State within the NCAA Match, Friday, March 17, 2023, in Columbia, S.C. Sean Rayford, Related Press
NCAA girls’s basketball goes worldwide later this yr, when South Carolina and Notre Dame will tip off the 2023-24 season in Paris.
The sport, which might be performed on Nov. 6, would be the first NCAA girls’s common season basketball recreation performed on “Parisian soil,” based on a assertion from South Carolina.
“We didn't hesitate to simply accept the invitation,” South Carolina head coach Daybreak Staley stated within the assertion. “Taking part in Notre Dame in Paris is a once-in-a-lifetime expertise for our student-athletes, and I’m grateful for the assist of our administration and our donors.”
Each South Carolina and Notre Dame are ranked within the high 10 of ESPN’s way-to-early Prime 25 rankings for the 2023-24 season.
Notre Dame made it to the Candy 16 of the NCAA Match this yr, the place the Irish fell to No. 2 seed Maryland. South Carolina tried to repeat as champions with an undefeated streak courting again to final season, however fell to Iowa within the Ultimate 4.
The NCAA’s selection of two girls’s groups to play in its first regular-season recreation in Paris reveals the rising recognition of ladies’s basketball.
This yr’s NCAA girls’s basketball match noticed record-breaking TV viewership numbers. The ultimate between LSU and Iowa drew a median of 9.9 million viewers, making it essentially the most considered NCAA girls’s basketball remaining in historical past, The New York Instances reported.
“It’s all the time been my mission to interrupt boundaries and supply alternatives for my gamers to have life-changing experiences,” Notre Dame head coach Niele Ivey stated. “Ladies’s basketball is on the rise, and having this publicity will assist to develop the sport on a global degree.”
South Carolina misplaced 5 gamers to the WNBA this month, together with Aliyah Boston who was the No. 1 general decide within the draft on Monday. However it can nonetheless have SEC all-freshman guard Raven Johnson, who’s 3-pointers performed a pivotal function in South Carolina’s try to return again in opposition to Iowa.
November’s recreation may even function two coach of the yr recipients: Staley, a three-time Naismith Coach of the Yr winner, and Ivey, the 2023 ACC Coach of the Yr, based on the assertion.
This received’t be Staley’s first time teaching a recreation internationally. Staley was the top coach of the USA Basketball girls’s nationwide staff on the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the place the U.S. received its seventh consecutive gold medal, based on USA Basketball’s web site.
The venue for the Paris recreation has but to be introduced — Notre Dame says the knowledge might be launched within the spring — however when the Detroit Pistons and Chicago Bulls performed in Paris in January, Accor Enviornment was stuffed to 100% capability with 15,885 individuals in attendance, based on ESPN.
NCAA video games overseas
Whereas that is the NCAA’s first regular-season basketball recreation in Paris, it's not the establishment’s first worldwide recreation.
Final summer season, over 50 males’s faculty basketball groups performed in overseas exhibition excursions in Europe, Australia and Canada, based on On3. Per NCAA guidelines, a staff could make a global journey as soon as each 4 years.
And Notre Dame’s girls’s basketball staff received’t be the one Notre Dame staff to play internationally this yr. Notre Dame soccer will journey to Dublin, Eire, to play Navy in August, Entrance Workplace Sports activities reported.