{"id":67737,"date":"2025-08-08T14:02:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T14:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/67737\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T14:02:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T14:02:07","slug":"duke-basketballs-non-conference-schedule-could-be-blessing-or-curse-in-2025-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/67737\/","title":{"rendered":"Duke basketball’s non-conference schedule could be blessing or curse in 2025-26"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Scheyer never holds back from giving his team an extremely challenging non-conference slate, and the 2025-26 season is no different. The Blue Devils have arguably the toughest non-con slate<\/a> in all of college basketball next season, and scheduling a slate so grueling could either be a great thing for the squad, or something that hurts it as March begins to roll around. <\/p>\n

Scheyer and the Blue Devils kick off their non-conference slate of games in their first game of the season, when Duke takes on Texas in the inaugural Dickie V Classic <\/a>at Spectrum Center in Charlotte, NC. But that’s just the beginning of the madness. <\/p>\n

Duke will then face five teams ranked in ESPN’s preseason top 25,<\/a> with three of those squads ranked in the top ten. It’s complete mayhem, and it could help or hurt the program in the long run. <\/p>\n

Although the Blue Devils are extremely talented, this year’s squad is also extremely young and inexperienced.<\/a> In today’s era of college basketball, most of the top teams are run by veterans. Duke has its veteran pieces<\/a> in players like Caleb Foster and Isaiah Evans, but no returner has yet proven to be a true leader.<\/p>\n

Because of that, Duke is a really hard team for networks to rank, and for good reason. This team is built on potential, not proven production. With so many marquee games, December could come around, and Duke is regarded as a top three to five team in the land, or the Blue Devils become complete pretenders. <\/p>\n

Across the five non-con games against ranked opponents, the worst record Duke can manage and still be considered a national title contender is probably 3-2. That’s no easy task. Duke has to face Kansas, Arkansas, Texas Tech, and Michigan on neutral floors and Michigan State on the road. The team’s only draw at home is Florida in the ACC\/SEC Challenge.<\/p>\n

So, if Scheyer’s squad struggles against all of these top teams, it will be really hard for Duke to maintain its status as a true contender and earn a high seed in the NCAA Tournament, given how shallow the ACC is projected to be this year. One of the main reasons Scheyer gives his guys such a grueling non-con slate is because of the lack of resume-building wins in the ACC. <\/p>\n

So many marquee non-conference games could bring the Blue Devils into consideration with the best teams in the nation come December, but it could also push the program out of the top 15 or 20 in the AP Poll if the majority of these contests don’t go in Duke’s favor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jon Scheyer never holds back from giving his team an extremely challenging non-conference slate, and the 2025-26 season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-67737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}