Tag: Las Vegas Showdown

ESPN announces tip-off time for Duke basketball game against Kansas in Las Vegas

Duke basketball will play Kansas under the Las Vegas lights after ESPN confirmed the game’s tip-off time on Thursday.

The Duke Blue Devils and Kansas Jayhawks get to play a night game in the country’s most nocturnal city.

The Las Vegas Showdown revealed its tip-off times on Thursday with Duke and Kansas set for the first game of the night at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time on November 26th.

The battle pits two preseason favorites against each other on the hardwood. Duke, thanks to top-ranked freshman [autotag]Cooper Flagg[/autotag], opened as the No. 1 overall seed in ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi’s projected 2025 bracket. However, Kansas coach Bill Self lured big names from the transfer portal to supplant Jon Scheyer’s team atop Lunardi’s rankings.

The Tuesday game also marks the back half of a road trip for Scheyer’s team as the Blue Devils play Arizona in its home arena just four days earlier.

With the game taking place out west, the Blue Devils and Jayhawks will actually be the first game of the night. Seattle and Furman, the other two teams competing at the inaugural event, will tip off at 11:30 p.m. Eastern time

The announcement came within hours of the State Farm Champions Classic revealing that Duke and Kentucky would also play at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time on November 12, albeit as the second of two games.

Duke basketball officially scheduled to play the Kansas Jayhawks in Vegas this November

The Blue Devils and Jayhawks will play one game of a doubleheader in Las Vegas on November 26 as part of the 2024-25 season.

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.

Seattle and Furman will play each other in the second game of the back-to-back.