Duke opens the 2025-26 season in Charlotte against the Texas Longhorns. As you may know, Texas is starting over, having given Rodney Terry the boot after last season and hiring Sean Miller.
Miller was doing a second tour at Xavier after getting fired by Arizona after the Adidas/FBI scandal.
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Texas fired Terry after the Longhorns lost to – wait for it – Xavier – in last spring’s NCAA Tournament.
We don’t know yet what Miller is working with in Austin, but whatever else you may think about him, and plenty of people have had thoughts following the fiasco in Tucson, he’s not a bad coach. He’s not a great coach, but he did well at Arizona, getting his team to Elite Eight three times, in addition to taking Xavier that far in 2008.
So what does his team think about opening against Duke? Glad you asked.
Tramon Mark said this: “I love it. Duke’s a great challenge for us right out of the season. It’ll test everything that we’ve been working on. These 30 days of practice that we’re about to have is all for that right there.”
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Fellow guard Jordan Pope added this: “It’ll be a good test, obviously, right out the gate, throw us into the fire, see what we’re made of. College basketball, that’s what you ask for. That’s what you want. You don’t want to start off playing some random team. So I think a school like Duke, which is a very prominent team in college basketball, and I’m pretty sure they’ll be highly ranked. It’ll be a good opportunity for us to see where we stand and how we’re looking November 4.”
We’ll see soon enough.
