 |
| Basketball Hall of Famer Dave Gavitt (r) |
From our friends at Georgetown Athletics...
The Georgetown University men’s basketball team will play at the University of Maryland in one of eight games announced by the BIG EAST Conference and the Big Ten Conference as part of the match-ups for the inaugural 2015 Gavitt Tipoff Games. The Gavitt Tipoff Games will be held annually between the two conferences and are named in honor of Dave Gavitt, the founder of the BIG EAST and a basketball visionary.
The Hoyas and the Terrapins will play at XFINITY Center in College, Park, Md., on Tuesday, November 17. The teams will play the following season at Verizon Center in Washington, D.C.
“Our programs share a great deal of history,” Georgetown Head Coach John Thompson III said. “Memories of Pops and Lefty, Merlin Wilson and Tom McMillen, Craig Shelton and Buck Williams, Allen Iverson and Joe Smith, Greg Monroe and Greivis Vasquez and many, many more dance in our heads.
“The time is right to make new memories. We are excited.”
The annual series will feature renewed battles between local foes and attractive intersectional match-ups. Eight teams in the inaugural event advanced to the NCAA Tournament and won at least 20 games last season.
Other match-ups include Creighton at Indiana, Illinois at Providence, Rutgers at St. John’s, Xavier at Michigan, DePaul at Penn State, Nebraska at Villanova and Iowa at Marquette.
“Playing a local rival like Maryland strengthens Washington, D.C. as a leading college basketball city in the country,” Georgetown Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Lee Reed said. “The Gavitt Tipoff Games feature two of the top conferences in the country and will be a great week for college basketball.”
The game with Maryland will be the 64th meeting all-time between the two schools. The teams last played during the 2008-09 season, a 75-48 Georgetown win during the Old Spice Classic in Florida. Georgetown has won four of the last six meetings between the teams, with Maryland leading the head-to-head series, 36-27. The series between the schools began in 1935 and the Hoyas and the Terrapins played each other every year between 1947 and 1976.
The unique series between the two conferences is named to honor the late Gavitt, who had a profound and lasting influence on the sport of basketball on the collegiate, professional and Olympic levels. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.
Beginning in 2015 and scheduled through 2022, the Gavitt Tipoff Games will be played on four-consecutive days in the first full week of the college basketball campaign. The series will span eight years, with games played at home sites. Each BIG EAST team will participate a minimum of six times, while Big Ten programs will take part a minimum of four times. Teams from both conferences already meet in some traditional rivalry games, and those match-ups will continue in the upcoming seasons.
Television coverage of the Gavitt Tipoff Games will be controlled by the conference of the home team. BIG EAST home games will be telecast by FOX Sports 1, while Big Ten home match-ups will appear on ESPN or Big Ten Network.
