The ACC will crown its 2026 women’s basketball tournament champion Sunday at Gas South Arena in Duluth, Ga.
“I don’t even know where Duluth is,” North Carolina coach Courtney Banghart said Sunday.
The town has a population of roughly 32,000 and, depending on traffic, can be an hour-long drive—or longer—north of downtown Atlanta. Gas South Arena is 28 miles away from State Farm Arena, where the NBA’s Hawks play.
This event, which begins Wednesday, marks the conference’s first time playing its women’s hoops tournament at a neutral site outside of the Carolinas.
Greensboro, N.C., where the ACC had its headquarters before moving to Charlotte in 2023, has hosted the women’s tournament all but one year since 2000. But last year Duluth was awarded the event after an “extensive bid process and subsequent evaluation by the league’s coaches and administrators,” according to the ACC’s original announcement.
Last year’s tournament at the 22,000-seat First Horizon Coliseum drew more than 70,000 fans for the first time since 2009.
The Decision Process
“We went to an open-bid process, and we allowed everybody within our East Coast footprint to bid,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told The Fayetteville Observer last year. “So there were no predetermined outcomes, and at the end of the day, the folks in the Greater Atlanta area over at Gas South Arena came up with a proposal that was outstanding.”
Gas South Arena has a capacity of 13,000, and previously hosted the SEC women’s basketball tournament in 2010, 2013, and 2014. Those tournaments drew 27,894, 20,497, and 30,467 fans, respectively.
Today, the venue is home to the East Coast Hockey League’s Atlanta Gladiators, the National Lacrosse League’s Georgia Swarm, and the Pro Volleyball Federation’s Atlanta Vibe.
The ACC women’s basketball tournament tips off with No. 13 Stanford vs. No. 12 Miami on Wednesday at 11 a.m. ET. The ACC Network has TV coverage for the first two days of the tournament, with ESPN channels joining the broadcasts starting Friday.
Other Power 4 women’s basketball conference tournaments taking place this week include the SEC in Greenville, S.C., the Big Ten in Indianapolis, and the Big 12 in Kansas City, Mo.
The host site for the 2027 ACC women’s basketball tournament has not been announced.
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