Duke, Arizona Announce A Home-And-Home Series

Well it’s been a while since we’ve seen this: Duke and Arizona announced a home-and-home series Monday.

It’s been a while in two senses.

Duke played at Arizona fairly early in the Coach K era but the series was ended, partly because Duke had issues with PAC-whatever it was then officiating. One official in particular, who we won’t name, was a notorious homer.

And the second sense is that Duke stopped doing home-and-homes under Coach K sometime after the ‘92 season in favor of neutral court engagements.

This was partly because the circus got so strong in the Laettner era that it really was too much, and partly because the whole Duke hating thing got way out of hand. So to rein that in and to protect his players from abuse, Coach K just basically stopped playing at non-ACC schools.

It’s interesting that Jon Scheyer is making this departure and, we think, a good thing. For one, it’ll improve the home schedule a great deal.