IU to play Maryland in Big Ten/ACC Challenge

One week after the IU men’s basketball squad lost a teammate, the Hoosiers picked up an opponent.

IU Athletics announced Wednesday the Hoosiers will welcome the Maryland Terrapins to Assembly Hall in December as part of the annual Big Ten/ACC Challenge.

The announcement came exactly one week after former IU guard Nick Williams announced his intent to transfer from the program. Williams joined guard/forward Malik Story, who announced his plans to transfer in March.

The Hoosiers and Terps met once before in the Challenge – an 80-74 overtime IU win at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. The two teams faced off earlier that year, though the outcome of the 2002 National Championship was a bit more forgettable for IU fans.

The Dec. 1 game will be just the second time in seven years the Hoosiers square off against a Challenge opponent outside the state of North Carolina.

That same day, defending national champion North Carolina will play Michigan State in a rematch of this year’s national title game.

Other notable games include a Purdue-Wake Forest showdown in West Lafayette, a Duke-Wisconsin tilt in Madison, Wis., a Florida State-Ohio State matchup in Columbus, Ohio, and a Boston College-Michigan game in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Though IU will not officially release the basketball team’s calendar until later this year, Wednesday’s announcement gives fans another piece to the scheduling puzzle. The athletics department announced in March the Hoosiers would participate in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Puerto Rico Tip-Off from Nov. 19 to 22 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The Hoosiers will be joined by Dayton, George Mason, Georgia Tech, Kansas State, Villanova and UAB, led by former IU coach Mike Davis. An eighth team will be announced at a later date.