For the first time in more than 15 years, the biggest rivalry in college basketball is returning to broadcast television.
The season’s first men’s basketball meeting between North Carolina and Duke is scheduled to air on ABC February 13, it was announced Thursday, marking the first time that the rivals have played each other on broadcast television since a March 2011 game on CBS, and their first meeting on ABC since March 2002. Even their meeting in the 2022 NCAA Men’s Final Four aired exclusively on cable, as TBS, TNT and truTV had the Final Four and National Championship that year.
The game is scheduled to air at 5:30 PM ET, leading into the network’s Warriors-Knicks “NBA Saturday Primetime” game. The high-profile basketball doubleheader will take place about 24 hours before ABC carries its first Super Bowl since 2006 (and ESPN carries the first in its history).
Duke-North Carolina remains one of the biggest draws in college basketball, with last year’s two meetings ranking fourth and fifth for the regular season (not including conference tournament games). Last year’s first meeting averaged 3.51 million viewers, the most-watched between the rivals since their March 2022 matchup that marked Mike Krzyzewski’s final home game. (Note that changes in Nielsen methodology have benefited sports viewing over the past year.)
ABC is scheduled to carry a total of four men’s basketball games during the upcoming season, including the Louisville-Kentucky rivalry on December 12 (4 PM ET). That will be the first matchup of those rivals to air on broadcast television since 2022 on CBS.
The two other ABC games are Texas Tech-Kansas on February 6 and Florida-Arkansas on February 27.
ABC is also set to air eight women’s games this season, including USC-South Carolina on November 15, UConn-LSU on December 20 and LSU-South Carolina on February 21. (The network carried South Carolina-LSU in a primetime Saturday window last season; this year’s matchup is set for a Sunday afternoon, potentially a higher-rated window.) The schedule includes a pair of doubleheaders, Vanderbilt-LSU and South Carolina-Texas on January 3 and Duke-Notre Dame and Texas-Kentucky on January 10.
