A month after reports first surfaced of a potential basketball game between Duke and Kansas during the 2024-25 season, ESPN officially revealed The Las Vegas Showdown on Thursday.
The Blue Devils and the Jayhawks will feature as part of a doubleheader in the famed city on November 26. The game will be played at T-Mobile Arena, normally home to the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights.
The game immediately becomes one of the most anticipated on the 2024-25 schedule. Self’s Jayhawks won the national championship in 2022, and after a 23-11 season and a second-round exit last year, he brought back every star and welcomed Wisconsin’s AJ Storr and Alabama’s Rylan Griffen in the transfer portal.
Duke head coach Jon Scheyer, on the other hand, brings in the best recruiting class in the country and four transfers of his own, led by Tulane’s Sion James and 2023-24 Big Ten Sixth Man of the Year Mason Gillis.
ESPN bracket expert Joe Lunardi thinks these might be the two teams to beat in 2024-25. He initially had Duke as his projected No. 1 seed in his way-too-early Bracketology, but he bumped the Blue Devils for the Jayhawks in his second update.
.@TheLVShowdown will feature a doubleheader at @TMobileArena on November 26!@DukeMBB vs. @KUHoops @seattleumbb vs. @FurmanMBB
Pre-sale sign up: https://t.co/lYLTcnZpmb pic.twitter.com/K3xrtXaxKD
— ESPN Events (@ESPNEvents) May 23, 2024
Seattle and Furman will play each other in the second game of the back-to-back.