Duke basketball has big-time foe coming to Cameron in 2023, with return trip in 2024
While embarking on a new era with Jon Scheyer as its head basketball coach, Duke is turning back the clock decades when it comes to scheduling.
Playing a home-and-home series with another perennial non-conference top 25 program, something the Blue Devils did regularly during the first two decades of Mike Krzyzewski’s tenure as their coach, will return in Scheyer’s second season.
Duke and Arizona have agreed to a two-game series, beginning with a game at Cameron Indoor Stadium during the 2023-24 season on Nov. 10, 2023, and a game the following season on the Wildcats’ home court at the McHale Center in Tucson on Nov. 21, 2024.
“I have tremendous respect for (coach) Tommy Lloyd and Arizona,” Scheyer said in a statement. “For our team, I’m grateful for what I know will be important early-season tests. For our fans and for college basketball, it will be exciting to see these two storied programs over the next two years come together in two of the greatest on-campus venues in the sport.”
In last season’s final Associated Press Top 25 poll, Arizona was ranked No. 2 with Duke at No. 9. The offseason rankings, heading into next season, by CBSSports.com have Duke at No. 5 and Arizona at No. 15.
“We felt this was a great opportunity to play two games against an incredible program like Duke,” Lloyd said in a statement. “Both programs are national brands with a rich history and have played some memorable games against each other, especially in the NCAA Tournament. But Coach Scheyer and I both felt these games would benefit our programs and be something that our fans would be excited about.”
Other than games as part of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, Duke for the most part stopped playing non-conference games on an opponent’s home court in the late 1990s.
Prior to that, the Blue Devils played, for example, UCLA six times between 1992-98, alternating between Cameron and Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles.
In 1991 and 1992, during Duke’s back-to-back national championship seasons, the Blue Devils played two games with LSU — one at home, one on road.
In recent seasons, Duke played St. John’s at home and on the road. But that also allowed the Blue Devils to play at New York’s Madison Square Garden, which the Red Storm use as their home court. Duke annually plays at least one regular-season game in the New York City area.
During the first decade of this century, Duke played six games with Georgetown as part of a home-and-home series between 2003-10 alternating seasons between Cameron and Washington, D.C.
But, again, that gave the Blue Devils a double benefit of playing at the then-MCI Center (now Capital One Arena), a building that is now part of the ACC tournament rotation after hosting the event for the first time in 2005.
In 2010, Georgetown was ranked No. 7 when it beat the then-No. 8 Blue Devils, 89-77, in Washington. That’s the only time since facing St. John’s in 1999 — other than the ACC-Big Ten Challenge — the Blue Devils played a fellow top-10 ranked non-conference team on its home court.
Duke and Arizona haven’t played a regular-season game since 2013, when the Wildcats won 72-66 in the NIT Season Tip-off tournament championship game at Madison Square Garden.
Duke beat Arizona, 82-72, in the 2001 NCAA tournament championship game at Minneapolis.
The schools last played a home-and-home series in 1990 and 1991, with Duke winning 78-76 at Durham in 1990 and Arizona prevailing 103-96 in double overtime at Tucson in 1991 in a battle of two top-10 teams.
This story was originally published July 18, 2022 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Duke basketball has big-time foe coming to Cameron in 2023, with return trip in 2024."