Duke vs. Arizona: Home-and-home series between traditional powers should be the expectation, not the exception

The largest and best possible matchup of the first week of the males’s school basketball season will move down Friday at 7 p.m. ET and arguably the best possible section is the place the recreation will be performed. It may not be staged inside of a spottily attended NBA area or tip off in some far-flung health club in a heat locale. This one’s going to be on campus, in a packed basketball cathedral, a glowing matchup between two groups with rosters able to successful the 2024 NCAA identify.

No. 2 Duke is enjoying host to Twelfth-ranked Arizona. Hallefreakinglujah!

Cherish it, for that is the simplest recreation between ranked foes in the first 8 days of the males’s school hoops calendar. And if Arizona enjoying at Duke turns out like an extraordinary matchup, that is as a result of it’s. This will be their tenth head-to-head recreation, and simplest the 2nd time the Wildcats have long past to Cameron Indoor Stadium. Duke gained the first, beating Arizona 78-76 in a 1990 nonconference affair in Durham that used to be held — get this — in past due February that season. 

College basketball nonconference scheduling used to be so much other, and much better, and that brings me to nowadays’s column.

When the Blue Devils and Wildcats tangle, it is all the time must-see. Friday marks the 7th time an Arizona-Duke recreation options each ranked Twelfth or higher in the AP Top 25. The two maximum famously met in Minneapolis for the 2001 nationwide championship, an 82-72 Duke win, giving the program and Mike Krzyzewski a 3rd NCAA Tournament trophy.

Yet if Krzyzewski used to be nonetheless training Duke, this recreation would not be going down.

As a more youthful, extra keen trainer in the past due Eighties and early ’90s, Krzyzewski two times agreed to fly his Blue Devils out to Tucson, Arizona. Duke misplaced each instances to Lute Olson’s Cats. What’s extra, Ok didn’t care for the refs’ whistle in the desert. He by no means scheduled some other matchup with Arizona; each and every resulting contest got here on account of bracket play. Thankfully, Jon Scheyer used to be not conditioned to shun Arizona when he took over for Krzyzewski 19 months in the past. Scheyer is a part of an rising technology of coaches prepared to lean into not simply bold scheduling, however particularly and deliberately arranging for big-brand combatants in domestic/highway environments. 

“This isn’t going to be a one-time thing,” Scheyer instructed CBS Sports. “I want to schedule really good teams every season, whether it be Arizona or other big-time teams in the future.”

In talking to Scheyer, he used to be transparent: He’s speaking about home-and-home series with a few of the largest colleges in school basketball. 

Arizona’s simplest the get started of it. Perhaps home-and-homes watch for in the long term in opposition to the likes of Kansas, or Gonzaga, or Indiana, or UCLA, or UConn, and so on.? Having Cameron Indoor play host to top-shelf pageant in November — and on the flipside, getting Duke into some adversarial territory previous to ACC play — is the most important tone-setter that may percolate to different peak 25-type techniques.

“There’s a lot of really good programs and lots of programs that can beat you on any given night, but only few programs that have a national brand,” Arizona trainer Tommy Lloyd instructed CBS Sports. “For me, I want to have Arizona playing other big programs and have it be a big deal. I want to be involved in those types of games.”

Lloyd and Scheyer are taking calls and open to enjoying the best possible of the best possible in the best possible of environments: on-campus venues, the place the quantity can buzz your mind and take a look at your workforce’s mettle in the maximum difficult tactics. This is particularly essential given how the multi-team match (MTE) area continues to develop. By their very nature, MTEs are staged in impartial environments, which range when it comes to location enchantment, and significantly range in high quality. Some are super; many are forgettable. Each 12 months, school basketball’s November and December calendar will get extra of those MTEs sprouting up as a result of, why else, there is cash to be made. The creep has a trickle-down affect on home-and-home likelihoods between colleges that topic maximum. 

The Dukes and Arizonas of the recreation ensuring to stand every different on campus grounds provides a bit extra juice. Hopefully it is contagious. Let me be transparent on one thing: It’s not that males’s school basketball is devoid of home-and-home series at the high-major degree. We’ve nonetheless were given ’em, however the efficiency has receded in the previous decade. Games like this one, along with techniques similar to Kansas and Indiana doing a two-year on-campus series, and a six-year settlement between Kentucky and Gonzaga, make the common season topic extra. 

That in thoughts, Scheyer instructed me we will be expecting Duke (below his command) to agenda no less than one high-major home-and–domestic in November/December annually transferring ahead. Later this month, the Blue Devils will play at No. 14 Arkansas (some other NCAA identify recreation rematch, that one being ’94) for the first time in program historical past. On Nov. 21, 2024, Scheyer will fly his workforce out to Tucson for a rematch with Arizona. With Scheyer locking up the No. 1 2024 recruiting elegance, led by means of peak general recruit Cooper Flagg, Blue Devils @ Wildcats may just smartly be the largest non-con recreation subsequent season. 

“Obviously, the chance to test your team’s principles early in the season against an opponent like Arizona is too good to pass up,” Scheyer mentioned. “Respect for Tommy and what he has done, and it’s a great opportunity for both programs.”

It would were simple for Scheyer to proceed going with Krzyzewski’s scheduling ideology. Duke is robust sufficient to the place it could actually play someone, anyplace in its nonconference agenda. Credit to Scheyer for transferring off K’s manner, which used to be some distance from egregious, however nonetheless may have been extra bold. For as undeniably nice as Krzyzewski used to be, he refused to agenda home-and-homes over the ultimate 13 years of his occupation. The ultimate time Duke performed a non-league highway recreation that wasn’t a TV-mandated association (i.e. ACC/Big Ten Challenge) used to be a 2008 loss in opposition to Michigan. 

“It’s good for Duke, good for the ACC, good for college basketball,” Scheyer mentioned. 

However, the particular person chargeable for catalyzing Friday’s recreation is Lloyd. In the spring of 2022, he reached out to Scheyer and the two briefly were given to scheming on how they may make a home-and-home paintings. It used to be performed in reasonably brief order, which speaks to the resourceful method each have in spite of simply 3 mixed years of head training enjoy. 

For Lloyd, this may not transform the norm — it is already the norm. Arizona at Duke on Friday night time is the newest instance of Lloyd’s daring scheduling philosophy. Since taking the task, he is coached or scheduled Zona non-con video games in domestic/highway environments in opposition to Illinois, Tennessee, Duke and Wisconsin. He’s additionally enjoying Purdue in Indianapolis and Alabama in Birmingham, Alabama later this season. Lloyd mentioned there’ll be extra large nonconference Arizona video games in domestic/highway environments in the years yet to come, even with Arizona making its 2024 transfer to the ultra-competitive Big 12. 

“I think it’s important to play games like this,” he instructed CBS Sports. “Obviously scheduling is very difficult and it’s probably an art more than a science based on preference. When you’re at a program like Arizona, you have to put your program on a national platform as often as you can. The opportunity to do this at a school like Duke is one I appreciate.”

The 36-year-old Scheyer and 48-year-old Lloyd have each been nice out of the gate. Lloyd’s 61 wins in his first two seasons are an NCAA document for a first-time trainer. Scheyer’s debut season incorporated guiding Duke to a No. 5 seed, successful the ACC Tournament and going undefeated at domestic. 

Two younger, emerging stars in the occupation are doing their section to beef up males’s school hoops’ early season product. It’s refreshing. 

The winner of Friday night time’s recreation will get a Quad 1 victory that may be value masses by means of the time Selection Sunday arrives. And the loser? It might smartly be the maximum decent loss on the agenda 4 months from now. It would possibly not even value a seed line. There is not a lot possibility, however the upside is immense. Lloyd and Scheyer remember that. Let’s unfold the phrase.

It’s all too simple to look how those two may have attempted to ease into their once-in-a-lifetime task alternatives. Instead, they are taking pictures what is best possible for his or her techniques whilst uplifting the recreation in the procedure. Terrific. Every trainer at each and every power-conference program of notice should be doing the identical. If they did, we might have a couple of ranked-on-ranked matchup in the first 8 days of the season.

Duke vs. Arizona all-time series