Blue Devils will play UNC and Louisville twice but miss out on game against Miami
Duke will play North Carolina and Louisville twice in the upcoming men’s basketball season, the ACC announced Wednesday afternoon.
The league is downshifting from the 20-game schedules that have been in place since the 2019-20 season and dropping back to 18 ACC games. Giving teams the ability to add two quality non-conference teams was done with the idea of bolstering the league’s metrics after only four of the league’s 18 teams made the NCAA tournament this past season.
The byproduct of reducing league games for an 18-team conference is the loss of home-and-home matchups. Only one rival will be a permanent home-and-home under this scheduling format — in Duke’s case, that’s obviously going to be UNC.
The other home-and-home matchup will rotate and first up for the Blue Devils is the Louisville team it beat in the ACC tournament championship a couple of months ago.
With a second home-and-home matchup, it means every ACC team will miss playing one team in the league. For Duke in the upcoming season, that will be Miami — which is coached by former Duke assistant coach Jai Lucas.
Here is a list of Duke’s home and road ACC games:
Home and away: UNC and Louisville.
Home only: Boston College, Clemson, Georgia Tech, SMU, Syracuse, Virginia and Wake Forest.
Road only: California, Florida State, N.C. State, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Stanford and Virginia Tech.