With new host, ESPN College GameDay returns to NCAA women’s basketball
ESPN will bring its iconic College GameDay show to five women’s basketball games this season.
The show will broadcast from from Austin, Texas, where the Longhorns will host rival Oklahoma on Sunday, Feb. 1. College GameDay will air at noon on ESPN before the Sooners and Longhorns tip-off at 3 p.m. ET on ABC.
It will be the first time the Longhorns have hosted GameDay for women’s basketball and the eighth time it’s gone live from an SEC matchup.
The other four GameDay road trips will be determined as the season progresses through conference tournaments in early March.
“Our team continues to look for new and innovative ways to highlight these dynamic players and passionate fan bases on a week-to-week basis and we cannot wait to get started,” ESPN senior vice president of production Meg Aronowitz said in a statement.
Analysts Andraya Carter and Chiney Ogwumike return to the GameDay set — the fourth season for Carter and third for Ogwumike — but the big change this year will be in the host chair. Christine Williamson will take the lead microphone as part of her expanded role that ESPN announced in December.
The show had been hosted by Elle Duncan, who left ESPN for a role at Netflix last month. It was also revealed on Thursday that Duncan will be hosting the studio show for the USA Network’s coverage of the WNBA this upcoming season.
College GameDay aired from a women’s college basketball game for the first time in 2010 ahead of a the-Big East showdown between rivals Notre Dame and UConn. GameDay returned to a women’s game in 2011 — airing from Vanderbilt vs. Tennessee — before taking a decade-long hiatus. It returned in 2022 and has broadcast from multiple women’s basketball games in every season since.
Since 2022, GameDay has gone to seven SEC locations, four ACC games and two Big Ten clashes. Last year, all four of GameDay’s women’s basketball shows led into games that were broadcast on ESPN platforms.
