The Duke Blue Devils don't play host to big-time non-conference opponents all that often, but thanks to the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, they will on Tuesday. The No. 10 Blue Devils host the No. 22 Michigan Wolverines at Cameron Indoor Stadium, the famed venue at which Duke has not lost to a non-conference opponent since 2000.
College basketball schedule: No. 10 Duke hosts No. 22 Michigan in rare non-conference showdown at Cameron Indoor
Your 12-year-old child was not born the last time Duke lost a non-conference game at home. Could it happen Tuesday?
Duke has dropped two games early on, but it's not like the Blue Devils are losing to nobodies. Their first loss was 94-83 to Kansas in the Champions Classic in Chicago. At the time, Kansas was No. 3 in the Associated Press top 25, though the Jayhawks have since fallen to No. 6. Duke's second loss was Friday, a 72-66 loss in the NIT Season Tip-Off Final to the Arizona Wildcats. Arizona was No. 4 at the time of the game, and now it's the No. 2 team in the country.
Michigan hasn't played up to lofty expectations this year, but it's difficult to do so in November following a national championship runner-up season and the loss of that year's National Player of the Year, Trey Burke. Still, the Wolverines have excelled defensively—their 94.3 adjusted defensive efficiency at KenPom.com is 19th-best in the country—and have team size similar to Arizona and Kansas that disrupted Jabari Parker, which Jonathan Tjarks at SB Nation said is certainly one way to defend the freshman phenom.
The game tips off at 9:15 p.m. ET on ESPN and WatchESPN.
Below is some more of the notable action in college hoops Tuesday:
Indiana Hoosiers at No. 4 Syracuse Orange, 7:15 p.m. ET, ESPN/WatchESPN: The Orange leaped up to No. 4 in this week's AP top 25 thanks to Kansas' loss to Arizona, though Jim Boeheim's team has impressed so far on the merits of its offense instead of the usual suspect that separates Syracuse from the rest, its vaunted 2-3 zone defense. C.J. Fair has scored in double figures six of Syracuse's seven games this season, and that includes at least 20 points in three games. On the flip side, Indiana doesn't look like a typical high-scoring Tom Crean team this year; the Hoosiers' defense has carried them to a 6-1 record (the one loss was a one-point loss to the Connecticut Huskies the day before Thanksgiving). Indiana, a young but deep team, ranks 10th in the country with a 92.2 adjusted defensive efficiency.
Notre Dame Fighting Irish vs. No. 23 Iowa Hawkeyes, 9:15 p.m. ET, ESPN2/WatchESPN: The Hawkeyes just dropped their first game of the year, an 88-83 overtime loss to the Villanova Wildcats in the Battle 4 Atlantis, but Fran McCaffrey's team has played well early this season. Iowa is the 10th-ranked team in the country in KenPom.com's overlal ratings, already owning an overtime win over the Xavier Muskateers and a 36-point win over the UTEP Miners. Notre Dame suffered its only loss to Indiana State on Nov. 17, and its schedule has been soft since.
Texas Tech Red Raiders vs. No. 2 Arizona Wildcats, 11 p.m. ET, Pac-12 Network: Arizona will take the floor Tuesday for the first time since its 72-66 win over Duke in the NIT Season Tip-Off (and, for the first time since moving up to No. 2 in the AP top 25), and it does so against a Texas Tech team under first-year coach Tubby Smith. The Red Raiders have lost 30 in a row to ranked opponents, a streak that goes back exactly four years to the date of Tuesday's game: On Dec. 3, 2009, Pat Knight's Texas Tech team topped No. 10 Washington 99-92 in overtime.
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