Gainbridge Fieldhouse hosting two blue bloods for exhibition game on Oct. 18
The Hoosiers will face the Tar Heels on Oct. 18, then return to Gainbridge Fieldhouse for a regular-season matchup against Syracuse in November.
The Indiana men’s basketball team will play at least two games — and likely more — next season at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
IU will host the University of North Carolina for an exhibition game on Sunday, Oct. 18. It’ll be their first matchup between the programs since Nov. 30, 2022, when IU won by 12 at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in Bloomington.
It was a matchup of two top-20 teams.
It’ll also bring familiar sight lines to new UNC head coach Michael Malone, the former NBA head coach who took over the Tar Heels program in early April after serving as an analyst with ESPN.
The tip time is not yet finalized for this meeting of two historic blue blood programs. Hopefully, it’s a late-afternoon game because the Colts are scheduled to host the Tennessee Titans at 1 p.m. that day.
Tickets will go on sale at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on June 18.
This news comes a few weeks after an official announcement of a matchup between IU and Syracuse on Nov. 9. That will be a regular-season game and therefore count toward the standings.
The Hoosiers scheduled a preseason matchup against Baylor on Oct. 26 last season, then played Louisville in a regular-season meeting on Dec. 6. So it seems coach Darian DeVries and IU liked that setup — and they’re doing it again for the 2026-27 season.
Both games are being put on by Complete Sports Management, a third-party company responsible for organizing and executing events.
IU will then very likely return to The Fieldhouse at least one more time next season since it will be the host site for the Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament from March 9-14, 2027.
The women will head out to Las Vegas — pulling it out of the Midwest, where it has been so successful, for a season — for games at T-Mobile Arena. The men’s tournament will then be held in Las Vegas in 2028.