Pac-12 China Game 2015: Teams, Date, Comments and Reaction for Shanghai Matchup

The Washington Huskies and the Texas Longhorns are set to make history in 2015, as the two schools will face off in a basketball matchup to kick off the season Nov. 14.

The Pac-12 on Twitter has more:

"

The Pac-12 will become the first U.S. sports league, collegiate or professional, to host a regular season game in China! #Pac12ChinaGame

— Pac-12 Conference (@pac12) May 13, 2015"

“Basically my vision is that this will be an annual tip-off game, the way the Pac-12 starts off every year,” commissioner Larry Scott told Pete Thamel of SI.com. “It’ll be a premiere team against a premiere non-conference opponent, a new tradition for how we start the season.”

Holding basketball tournaments in varying locations is nothing new for college basketball, but hosting the game in China is certainly a historical and intriguing way to start the season. It's potentially a lucrative one as well: Thamel noted that an estimated 300 million people in China play basketball, so there is certainly a market for the sport in the country, both at the collegiate and the professional level. 

For the Pac-12, the chance to not only introduce its conference and teams to that market but also to reach out to a new country and seize on a new opportunity is ideal.   

“It’s bigger than athletics,” Washington athletic director Scott Woodward told Thamel. “It’s who we are as a university and a conference. We’re here and ready to break new ground and do new things.”

Assuming the game is a success over the next two years, the Pac-12 China Game could quickly become one of the better and more unique traditions in college basketball.