Four nationally ranked women’s college basketball teams converge on Uptown Charlotte this Sunday, Nov. 8, as the Ally Tipoff returns to Spectrum Center for a doubleheader pairing No. 1 South Carolina against North Carolina, followed by NC State against Kentucky. It’s the fourth staging of an event that has quickly become a fixture of the fall sports calendar in a city that has turned into something of a hub for the women’s game since the pandemic.
According to the Charlotte Sports Foundation, which organizes the event, South Carolina and North Carolina will open the day, with NC State facing Kentucky in the nightcap. The South Carolina-North Carolina matchup is set for 5:30 p.m. ET and will air on ESPN, per On3. South Carolina enters as the reigning 2024 national champion and one of the sport’s marquee programs, based not far from Charlotte in Columbia.
The second game’s start time carries some uncertainty. A snippet from the Atlantic Coast Conference lists NC State facing Kentucky at 3 p.m. ET on ESPN2, with NC State identified as No. 25 and Kentucky as No. 14 in that same account — rankings that could not be independently confirmed elsewhere. South Carolina and North Carolina have also been cited in rankings as No. 1 and No. 12, respectively, though that detail likewise traces back to the same thinly sourced snapshot.
A Doubleheader Locked In Through 2028
This isn’t a one-off booking. South Carolina is scheduled to play in the Ally Tipoff every year from 2026 through 2028, according to GamecocksOnline, the school’s official athletics site. After facing North Carolina this year, the Gamecocks are set to meet UConn in 2027 and NC State in 2028, giving Charlotte a rotating cast of blue-blood programs for the foreseeable future…