The Duke basketball team must have smiled when it confirmed they would play the Kansas Jayhawks at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on November 26.
The Blue Devils have played in the new Vegas stadium twice. They played UNLV in the arena’s first collegiate basketball game back in 2016, and they played No. 1 Gonzaga there back in 2021.
Duke won both games.
Coach K and his team throttled the Rebels for a 94-45 victory the first time around, 25 years after his iconic upset of UNLV in the 1991 Final Four. Grayson Allen, in one of the first games of his junior season, scored 34 points after he shot 12/16 from the floor. Luke Kennard added 16 points, and a freshman named Jayson Tatum came off the bench for 13 of his own.
In the fall of 2021, during Krzyzewski’s final season at the helm, the Blue Devils handed Gonzaga its first loss of the season. Four Bulldogs scored at least 15 points, including Drew Timme and Chet Holmgren, but 20-point games from Paolo Banchero and Wendell Moore Jr. proved to be enough.
Last trip to Vegas was a movie 🍿 pic.twitter.com/MCKWEMwQ6X
— Duke Men’s Basketball (@DukeMBB) May 23, 2024
Duke fans need to wait until November to see if the good vibes continue in Vegas.