By the time Arizona freshman Eli McWard and a row of friends took third-row seats behind McKale’s north baseline Friday evening, they knew the place pretty well.
“We’ve been at McKale for 27 straight hours,” McWard said.
McWard, UA junior Johnny Taylor and about 400 other students received special line privileges by first attending enough other UA events to qualify for a Thursday night sleepover at McKale, after which they were given wristbands allowing them to enter first before Friday’s game.
Except it wasn’t just a sleepover. More of a huge party, really. Arizona fed the students a pizza dinner on Thursday, then showed Space Jam 2 and several Duke-Arizona games on the videoboard during the night.
“We wanted to make it fun,” UA athletic director Desiree Reed-Francois said.
The videos actually didn’t turn off until about 2:30 a.m., meaning some students received only an hour or two of sleep, if any.
By 4, McWard said his group woke up and, while receiving a free Chick-fil-A breakfast, soon bolted outside to get the first spot in the priority line, then stood there during the day Friday.
Brianna Hale, left, and Quinn D’Elia get in some school work in the chilly night outside McKale Center where hundreds of students turned out, November 21, 2024, to be the 600 to get first crack at seats in the Zona Zoo section for Arizona’s basketball game against Duke, Tucson, Ariz.
White out
Arizona created a white-out atmosphere by asking fans to wear white – though of course some wore red anyway – while the players came out in white warmup T-shirts.
Former players mostly complied, too.
Former Wildcat standout Mike Bibby wore a longsleeve white T-shirt while he sat along the south baseline, while former UA and NBA player (and Olympic volleyball player) Chase Budinger showed up with a white Arizona T-shirt and sat behind the south basket.
Also along the south baseline, guard Gilbert Arenas compromised with both colors, wearing a white T-shirt with a red No. 10 Arizona jersey over it. And Sean Miller-era star Derrick Williams wore a black shirt.
Red Panda sighting
Another sign Friday's game was a big one: Arizona hired acrobat Red Panda to work halftime, where she rode her trademark 7-foot unicycle around the court while flipping four or even five metal bowls at a time repeatedly on her head.
She missed a couple of bowls but greatly enthralled the crowd as usual.
Tucson stopover
For North Carolina-based analyst Jay Bilas, working Friday’s UA-Duke game for ESPN2 proved to be a convenient stopover.
Bilas will keep moving west this weekend to cover the Maui Invitational next week, another part of what ESPN bills as “Feast Week” coverage.
During the week from Nov. 21 to 29, ESPN scheduled 10 multi-team events to cover plus a few one-off matchups such as Duke-Arizona, Memphis-San Francisco and North Carolina-Hawaii.
Talent refill
With seven players listed on ESPN’s Top 100 NBA Draft prospects, Duke is expected to lose a lot of talent next season.
Of course, that’s not really a problem at Duke. Earlier this week, the Blue Devils announced the signing of their third straight No. 1 recruiting class as ranked by 247 Sports.
That includes not only five-star Duke legacies Cayden and Cameron Boozer – sons of former Blue Devils standout Carlos Boozer – but also one player they snagged off the USA Basketball U18 team that UA’s Tommy Lloyd coached last summer.
Lloyd offered a scholarship to forward Nik Khamenia of Los Angeles’ Harvard-Westlake High School after he helped USA win the U18 AmeriCup by averaging 7.7 points, 6.3 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 38.5% 3-point shooting.
Khamenia visited UA in late August but ultimately narrowed his choices to Duke, UCLA and Gonzaga before picking the Blue Devils. He joins the Boozer twins and yet another five-star, Texas forward Shelton Henderson.
“Nik is an incredible addition to our program," Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. "He's an incredible connector, has the feel and understanding of what it takes to win at every level, and has the competitive spirit to do whatever's required of him.”
The big number
9 – Times Caleb Love has faced Duke, seven of which were when he played for North Carolina.
