No. 12 Duke (3-1) at No. 17 Arizona (2-1) — McKale Center — 8:30 p.m. Friday — ESPN2 — 1290-AM
PROBABLE STARTERS
ARIZONA
G Jaden Bradley (6-3 junior)
G Caleb Love (6-4 fifth-year)
F KJ Lewis (6-4 soph.)
F Trey Townsend (6-6 fifth-year)
C Tobe Awaka (6-8 junior)
DUKE
G Tyrese Proctor (6-6 junior)
G Caleb Foster (6-5 sophomore)
F Kon Knueppel (6-7 freshman)
F Cooper Flagg (6-9 freshman)
C Khaman Maluach (7-2 senior)
How they match up
The series: UA beat Duke for the third straight time last season, 78-73 at Durham, N.C., to take a 6-4 lead in the series. Duke and Arizona each won on their homecourts during the 1989-90 and 1990-91 seasons, while Duke beat the Wildcats in the 1997-98 Maui Invitational and then 82-72 in the 2001 national championship game. UA defeated Duke 93-77 in the 2011 Sweet 16 and 72-66 at New York in 2013-14.
Game agreement: Arizona is hosting Duke in the return game of a home-and-home, two-year series that began last season at Durham, N.C. The teams have agreed to a separate semi-neutral matchup in Las Vegas during the 2027-28 season.
Duke overview: At just about any other program, life might get pretty rough after missing the Final Four by two points and then losing four starters. But Duke simply moved on from last season by bringing in the nation’s top-ranked recruiting class, including projected No. 1 NBA pick Cooper Flagg, and were already ranked No. 6 before losing to Kentucky in Atlanta last week.
In what is especially unusual by today’s standards of college basketball, all five Duke starters joined the program as freshmen, including three who did so his season. Those three freshmen — Flagg, small forward Kon Knueppel and center Khaman Maluach — are all projected NBA lottery picks.
Flagg is a supremely versatile power forward who causes problems all over the court, Knueppel is an all-levels scorer while Maluach has an unusual combination of size, strength and mobility that makes him especially difficult to deal with around the basket. Aussie guard Tyrese Proctor, once a UA recruiting target, has shifted mostly from point guard to shooting guard this season, allowing Duke to better take advantage of what has been 50% 3-point shooting so far. Sophomore Caleb Foster has mostly been at point guard where he has 12 assists to six turnovers over four games.
Off the bench, Purdue transfer Mason Gillis brings shooting ability and experience from helping the Boilermakers reach last season’s NCAA championship game, while freshmen wings Isaiah Evans and Darren Harris are high-IQ shooters. Tulane transfer Sion James brings size and playmaking ability to the backcourt, while Syracuse transfer Maliq Brown is an efficient scorer and active defender inside.
He said it: Duke “has a kid that’s probably one of the best players in college basketball in Cooper Flagg, so they kind of built around him. They have experienced guards like Proctor and Foster, their center (Maluach) is so long and covers so much ground, and Knueppel is a tremendous score and competitor.
“(Cooper) is a big-time player. He can score the basketball. He rebounds. He’s versatile in terms of what he does and how he plays. He can score from the perimeter like a guard. He can drive it to the basket. He can post up. He gives you a lot of different dimensions that you have to be worried about and try to defend.
“(Knueppel) shoots it, drives hard to the basket. He plays with great effort and pace and he’s a scorer. They put a lot of confidence in him, and he’s given them reason to put all that confidence in him because of the way he’s played.
“(Malauch) is not a stiff by any means. He’s a good player. You can see he’s booming with potential. In terms of his ability to play and his skill set, he’s still developing that part of it, but he’s a force.
“(The reserves) are all good players. They bring in guys that are good players and that are used to playing high level kind of basketball. When they put them in the game, they don’t blink. They just perform. There is no drop off in the way that they play compared to what the starters do.” — UA assistant coach Steve Robinson, who scouted the Blue Devils.
Key players
Duke – Cooper Flagg
If there’s any advantage to facing Duke’s latest freshman prodigy for Arizona, it’s that the Wildcats get to do so at McKale Center and when he’s playing just his fifth college game. Flagg has performed largely as advertised so far as a collegian, though his two late turnovers helped Kentucky pull out a 77-72 win over the Blue Devils on Nov. 12. He’s an active shot-blocker, rebounder, shooter and foul magnet, hitting 78.9% of his free throws when he gets to the line.
Duke’s Cooper Flagg (2) drives as Wofford’s Jeremy Lorenz (32) defends during the second half in Durham, N.C., Nov. 16, 2024.
Arizona — Caleb Love
After playing a clutch role in the Wildcats’ 78-73 win at Duke last season, hitting a 35-footer as time expired in the first half and then making four game-clinching free throws in the last 17.4 seconds, the former North Carolina standout waved goodbye to his longtime detractors at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Now, after struggling in UA’s loss at Wisconsin last week, Love has a different incentive on the line.
Arizona guard Caleb Love (1) celebrates after a dunk in the game against the Canisius Golden Griffins at McKale Center, Nov. 4, 2024.
SIDELINES
Lloydville?
Duke student fans are well-known for camping on the sometimes-freezing lawns outside of Cameron Indoor Stadium in what’s known as “Krzyzewskiville,” sometimes for days or even weeks depending on the matchup, Arizona’s Zona Zoo members had it easier before Friday’s game.
They just had to work a little.
Students who were among the top 600 point-getters for attending other UA events were allowed to enter McKale Center between 9 and 10 p.m. on Thursday night, treated to a pizza dinner and shown “Space Jam 2” on the McKale Center video board. In the morning, they were scheduled to receive doughnuts and a wristband, allowing them to return later to claim the best lower-row seats directly behind the north baseline.
“Hearing that they’re camping out a whole day before, I haven’t really had too much experience with that, but I think it’s cool,” center Tobe Awaka said. “It’s just a testament to the fans that we have here, how much they care, and what they mean to this program.”
Big game, same job
Because he spent 18 seasons as an assistant coach at North Carolina, UA assistant coach Steve Robinson was a natural pick to prepare the Wildcats’ scouting report for Duke.
But while he said even before UA won at Duke last season that it was a “special feeling” to win at Cameron Indoor Stadium, he’s also been around enough to have perspective.
It’s big, but it’s not everything.
“It’s our next game,” Robinson said. “They’re not going to stop the season, win or lose. It’ll be a high level game between two really competitive teams. It’s a great opportunity for our guys having a team of that quality to come to Tucson and play. I think that’s something that fans are excited about and the guys better be excited about playing, too.”
More McKale magic?
While the UA-Duke home-and-home series will wrap up Friday, replaced only with a neutral site game at Las Vegas during the 2027-28 season, UA president of basketball operations Matt King says other big home-and-homes are on the way.
UA has none announced for the 2025-26 season yet, but King said UA remains “very committed” to having two home-and-home series begin next season, with one starting at McKale and the other on an opposing campus.
“There might be more than that,” King said. “We’re having some really good conversations right now and and I’m excited about what that could mean.”
While neutral-site games, multi-team events and 20-game conference seasons have been putting a squeeze on traditional home-and-home series — in part because big neutral games can easily bundle with NIL opportunities — King says he thinks big home games can aid the other side of the athlete compensation package to come, revenue sharing.
“For most universities, the greatest opportunity they have is when games are played in in their own building,” said King, who formerly ran events with his Position Sports firm in Phoenix. “So I actually think there’s a world in which, in the future, there’s more and more games on actual college campuses. I might be in the minority in the thinking on that, but just as a former promoter, I think there’s very much a world in which that could happen.”
Numbers game
1: Duke’s Division I ranking in average height (6-7.5) as calculated by Kenpom, which takes the average of listed heights of every player on a team weighed by minutes played.
2: Of five Associated Press preseason first-team all-Americans scheduled to play at McKale on Friday in Flagg and Love.
33: Arizona’s Division I ranking in average height (6-6.3) as calculated by Kenpom.
— Bruce Pascoe
