NC State reportedly finalizing non-conference tilt with Ole Miss
When Will Wade was introduced as NC State’s 21st head coach in program history during a March press conference inside Reynolds Coliseum, he set the tone for what to expect with his scheduling approach.
“We’re going to challenge ourselves in the ACC, we’re going to challenge ourselves in the non-conference,” Wade said when he was hired. “You can’t be the best playing a bunch of bad teams. You get better by playing the best teams in the country.
“At McNeese, we had the 21st-ranked non-conference schedule in the country. That was at McNeese. We’re going to play the best. We’re going to challenge the best. We’ll schedule some Hall of Fame coaches if we need to.”
And so far, Wade and his staff have built a schedule that lives up to what the 42-year-old wanted to do in his debut campaign in Raleigh. The Wolfpack’s latest addition to the list? A neutral site contest with Ole Miss.
CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein reported that NC State and Ole Miss are in the process of finalizing an agreement to play in neutral-site contests over the next two seasons. The Pack and Rebels will play this season at First Horizon Coliseum in Greensboro on Dec. 21 before moving the game closer to Ole Miss during the 2026-27 campaign.
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NC State is 1-1 all-time against Ole Miss. The Wolfpack earned a 77-54 win over the Rebels in the 2000 NIT, while it lost 72-52 on the road in Oxford, Miss., during the inaugural ACC-SEC Challenge in the 2023-24 campaign.
The Ole Miss agreement joins a loaded non-conference slate that includes home dates against UAB (Nov. 7), Kansas (Dec. 13), Liberty and VCU. The Wolfpack is also set to play at Auburn in the ACC-SEC Challenge (Dec. 3) and in the Maui Invitational alongside Arizona State, Boise State, Chaminade, Seton Hall, Texas, USC and Washington State (Nov. 24-26).
In addition, NC State is working to finalize a preseason exhibition against South Carolina in Greensboro. That game will also feature the Wolfpack women’s team against Maryland in a doubleheader to ramp up to the 2025-26 season.
The rest of the Wolfpack’s schedule, which was headed by assistant Brandon Chambers, is expected to be released in the coming weeks.
