This is the third year the Pac-12 will open its men’s basketball season in China. The Conference became the first United States sports league, collegiate or professional, to host a regular-season contest in China in 2015 when Washington defeated Texas, followed by Stanford beating Harvard last season.

The Pac-12 China Game will help usher in the start of the 2017-18 U.S. college basketball season. The game will tip at 12:30 p.m. local Shanghai time on Saturday, Nov. 11 and be televised live on ESPN in the United States and streamed live on Youku Sports.

Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA), the world’s largest online and mobile commerce company, will once again serve as the game’s presenting sponsor after extending its sponsorship through the 2020 Pac-12 China Game. In addition to event sponsorship, Alibaba will distribute the game live via their mobile and digital distribution platforms and AliSports Group will support the game in the areas of sponsorship, ticketing, advertising and marketing. The company’s leadership will also host UCLA and Georgia Tech student-athletes and delegations from each university at their headquarters in Hangzhou for high-level meetings with company leadership and an academic symposium on Chinese culture and business, and the future of e-commerce.

Longtime Pac-12 partner Federation of University Sports of China (FUSC), which operates under China's Ministry of Education, will co-host the game, and AEG Asia will again operate the event.

The 2017 Pac-12 China Game will bring delegations from two prestigious U.S. universities to China for a week of events including an educational symposium and a community service event. UCLA is ranked No. 12 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), and Georgia Tech is a top 10 global engineering institution according to the 2017 U.S. News & World Report rankings.

For the first time, this year’s Pac-12 China Game will feature two men’s basketball teams coming off postseason appearances as UCLA advanced to the Sweet 16 of the 2017 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament and Georgia Tech reached the championship game of the National Invitation Tournament.

UCLA men’s basketball, winners of a record 11 NCAA national championships, is coming off a resurgent 2016-17 season during which the Bruins compiled a 31-5 overall record en route to finishing No. 8 in the final Associated Press top 25 poll. Head coach Steve Alford returns seven student-athletes from that team, including Aaron Holiday and honourable mention All-Pac-12 performer Thomas Welsh, while adding a top 5 recruiting class highlighted by McDonald’s All-Americans Jaylen Hands and Kris Wilkes.

Georgia Tech, the university attended by six-time Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) All-Star Stephon Marbury, has been revitalized under head coach Josh Pastner, who led the Yellow Jackets to a 21-16 overall record in his first season. Georgia Tech has made 16 NCAA Tournament appearances all-time, including in 1996 when Marbury helped the team to an Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season championship.

More than 7,000 fans have attended each of the previous Pac-12 China Games. The 2017 Pac-12 China Game will be played at Baoshan Sports Center, currently home to the Shanghai Baoshan Dahua Sharks of the Women’s Chinese Basketball Association as well as site of a number of CBA contests and last year’s Tencent Celebrity Basketball Game featuring Marbury and Tracy McGrady.

About Pac-12 Global:
Founded in 2011, Pac-12 Global is an unprecedented effort to harness the passion and spirit of collegiate athletics to showcase the Pac-12 Conference and its member institutions around the world, while giving student-athletes access to transformative life experiences and impactful cultural exchanges. The initiative uses athletics to support the ambitious international strategies that many Pac-12 universities have embarked upon to extend their reach around the world.