ESPNU Selects UNC Asheville at High Point as Feb. 19 Wildcard Game
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (www.BigSouthSports.com) – ESPNU has selected the
UNC Asheville at High Point men’s basketball contest as its third Big South Wildcard broadcast of the 2025-26 season, it was announced today by the Big South Conference office. The game will tip at 7:00pm inside the Qubein Center in High Point, N.C.
It will be just the third all-time Wildcard meeting between the squads on ESPNU, as Asheville won the most recent national TV match-up on Feb. 2, 2023 (89-63), with High Point the victor in the first meeting on Feb. 26, 2015 (75-71). The Feb. 19 broadcast will conclude the two-game season series, as the Panthers won the first meeting in the conference opener on Dec. 31, 87-69. In that contest,
Scotty Washington led HPU with a game-high 26 points, while
Kameron Taylor paced the Bulldogs with 21.
High Point is currently tied for first-place in the Big South standings at 10-1, and will make its second appearance on ESPNU this season and 15th overall (7-7 record). The Panthers are 22-4 overall on the season, have been ranked in the Collegeinsider.com Top 25 poll all year, and are the Big South’s top rated team in the NET (84) and KenPom (97). Through 11 conference games, High Point is the league leader in scoring (84.8 points), scoring defense (71.2 points allowed), scoring margin (+13.6), free throw percentage (74.5), assists (14.8) and steals (10.8), while
Terry Anderson is sixth with 19.4 points against league foes.
Asheville is currently tied for fourth-place with a 5-5 Big South record, and will appear on ESPNU this Thursday, Feb. 12, at Longwood, which will be its 20th all-time appearance in the Big South ESPNU Wildcard series (8-11 record). During the conference season, the Bulldogs are second in three-point percentage (36.2) and turnover margin (+1.60), while Taylor is the second-leading scorer in Big South action with 22.6 points per game.
This is the 13th year of the Big South’s ESPNU Wildcard series, which features four Thursday primetime broadcasts –- Jan. 29 (at High Point 84, Presbyterian 81), Feb. 12 (UNC Asheville at Longwood – 7:00pm), Feb. 19 (UNC Asheville at High Point - 7:00pm) and Feb. 26 (7:00pm) -- that are selected 14-21 days in advance. A total of 60 games have been played in the series that began in 2013-14, and the home teams are 39-21 while the 60 contests have been decided by an average of 9.95 points, with 33 (55.0 percent) of those being decided by single-digits.