Iowa Wraps Up ACC/B1G Challenge on High Note

IOWA CITY, Iowa - It was a made for TV event that survived longer than most network sitcoms and dramas.

For more than two decades, ESPN has brought the ACC/Big Ten Challenge to your living room, live and in color.

Great players, great coaches and some college bluebloods highlighted the annual duel between two marquee conferences. The ACC took a 12-8-3 lead into this week’s competition, not that it means anything.

When to comes time to tout your superiority, what really matters is NCAA championships. Since the ACC/Big Ten Challenge started in the 1999-2000 season, ACC schools have won eight national titles, the Big Ten one. And that was Michigan State in 2000. Duke and North Carolina have won three titles apiece, Maryland one and Virginia one.

With ESPN losing media rights to the Big Ten recently, the ACC/Big Ten connection was severed. Tune in to the ACC-SEC Challenge next November. And the shuffle of TV rights is just one reason for the event’s demise. It could also lead to a Big Ten/Big XII challenge down the road.

Scheduling has changed dramatically. All the in-season tournaments dominating the landscape these days have provided an opportunity to bring great teams together early in the season. There were so many intriguing matchups sandwiching Thanksgiving Day that it felt like the NCAA Tournament in March.

So the ACC/Big Ten Challenge will go the way of on-campus four-team events and ESPN’s Bracket Busters.

“I think it provided what we were looking for at the time,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said earlier this week. “You had marquee matchups early in the season, but there’s any number of ways you can accomplish that task.”

Changing, too, could be the size of the Big Ten. UCLA and USC will make it 16 teams, and that number could increase down the road. Big Ten schools currently play 20 league games.

“Who knows how many league games we’re going to end up playing down the road,” McCaffery said. “Everything is changing.”

Change? Iowa played Maryland in Baltimore in the inaugural ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Maryland is now a Big Ten rival.

The demise of the Big Ten-ACC event comes at a time when Iowa had finally gained some traction. Tuesday’s 81-65 victory over Georgia Tech was Iowa’s eighth victory in its last 10 challenge games. That includes a streak of five straight at Carver-Hawkeye Arena: Notre Dame in 2013, Florida State in 2015, Pittsburgh in 2018, North Carolina in 2020 and Tuesday’s game.

Iowa won just two of its first 11 games in the challenge, and lost seven straight between 2006 and 2012.

McCaffery finished with an 8-5 record in the event. Todd Lickliter was 0-3 and Steve Alford 2-3.

The Hawkeyes didn’t take part in the challenge in 2001, 2003 and 2004. Overall, Iowa was 7-3 at home, 3-7 on the road and 0-2 at neutral sites.

McCaffery-coached teams had three of its most impressive challenge victories in a three-year span starting in 2019 when they beat Syracuse, 68-54, before 20,844 in the Carrier Dome. Jordan Bohannon, 6 ½ months removed from hip surgery, had 17 points that included five 30-pointers. Iowa led by as many as 19 points in the second half.

No. 3 Iowa hosted No. 16 North Carolina in 2020, just the second time the Hawkeyes played in a challenge game where both teams were ranked. The other came in 2005, when No. 14 Iowa beat No. 24 North Carolina State, 45-42, at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

The Hawkeyes used sharp shooting from the perimeter to beat the Tar Heels, 93-80. Bohannon, CJ Fredrick and Joe Wieskamp combined to make 17 of 30 3-pointers in the victory. After North Carolina rallied to take a 68-67 lead with just under 10 minutes to play, Iowa responded with a 14-0 run over 2 minutes that started and ended with a Bohannon triple.

The Hawkeyes won at Virginia in 2021, 75-74. Joe Toussaint gave Iowa a one-point lead on a basket with :08 remaining, then Patrick McCaffery had a game-saving block at the other end of the floor as time expired.

But the most impressive Iowa victory in the series came in Chapel Hill, N.C., in 2014. Mike Gesell’s conventional three-point play with 1:16 remaining broke a tie and gave the Hawkeyes a 60-55 victory over No. 12 North Carolina. Gesell finished with a team-best 16 points and center Adam Woodbury, who had been recruited by the Tar Heels and Coach Roy Williams, added 11 points and seven rebounds.

Iowa had been just 3-10 in ACC/Big Ten Challenge games heading into that 2014 game. Things improved dramatically starting with that trip to the Smith Center.