Champions Classic: No. 2 Duke meets No. 5 Michigan State, No. 15 Kansas faces No. 24 Kentucky

There were plenty of reasons for Duke, Michigan State, Kansas and Kentucky to load their exhibition slate with high-profile games.

This week is one of them.

The second-ranked Blue Devils meet the fifth-ranked Spartans while No. 15 Kansas plays No. 24 Kentucky on Tuesday night in the Champions Classic, this year hosted by the United Center in Chicago. For many years, the annual doubleheader represented the first big step up in competition for the quartet of bluebloods after easy exhibition games and lopsided regular-season openers.

That would have been the case this year, too, without those exhibitions.

Duke beat Army and Coastal Carolina last week; Michigan State blew out Quinnipiac and Toledo; Kansas handled Fordham and Middle Tennessee; and Kentucky took care of Manhattan and James Madison. The only game that was even close was the last of them, and the Wildcats pulled away from the Dukes in the closing minutes for a reasonably comfortable victory.

Compare that to the exhibitions they played: Kentucky faced No. 16 Texas Tech, Michigan State played UConn and Marquette, the Jayhawks played Louisville, Duke played Tennessee, and Kansas and the Blue Devils faced each other at Allen Fieldhouse.

“It’s part of the reason we played the exhibition schedule we did,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer acknowledged. “We wanted to be tested in different ways. There’s no question Michigan State is going to test us in ways we haven’t seen yet. We know it’s going to be a tough game but it’s also what we signed up for. We want to be in moments like this and games like this."

Scheyer just doesn't necessarily want that big moment to come without a little bit of work against similar competition.

Not to say that the slate of exhibition games is real competition. By design, they offered teams an opportunity to experiment with lineups and playing styles without any danger of a loss hurting their resumes. But after the Blue Devils beat the Jayhawks a couple of weeks ago, Scheyer admitted that the game felt nothing like a meaningless exhibition.

Now is when that pays off.

“I feel like this is a statement game for us just to show where we're at currently in the season,” the Wildcats' Zoom Diallo said. “Kansas is a premier college basketball team, and so are we. We're going into an atmosphere where we're ready to fight.”

Duke and Kansas are both 9-6 in the Champions Classic, which matches those same four teams in various combinations and different cities during the first couple of weeks each season. Kentucky and Michigan State are each 6-9 in the series.

“We're going to play a good team,” Jayhawks coach Bill Self said of their matchup with the Wildcats. “Two winningest programs of all time hooking up and playing at a neutral-site venue that'll, I'm sure, be turned up. It should be a lot of fun.”

The Champions Classic isn't the only big matchup Tuesday night, one of the few days of the week that isn't dominated by college football or the NFL at this time of year. Third-ranked Illinois is headed to Texas Tech for the kind of true nonconference road game that has become increasingly rare as schools chase NIL money available by playing neutral-site games.

Unless you're a prep football fan, Friday night is the other night that's relatively quiet when it comes to the pigskin. And that means the hardwood can take center stage. This week, Ohio State plays fourth-ranked UConn in Hartford, Connecticut; sixth-ranked Virginia visits Maryland; No. 12 Arizona heads to Auburn; and Seton Hall takes a trip to No. 18 Alabama.

The college basketball season really gets going next week, when the first of two Players Era Festival events takes place in Las Vegas, and a series of tantalizing nonconference matchups make for some prime midweek viewing.

In the “Players Era 8,” No. 1 Florida will face Notre Dame and No. 8 Houston will play Rutgers on Nov. 17 with the winners meeting in the semifinals. The Jayhawks will play UNLV and West Virginia will face Auburn with those winners also advancing.

The Illini, meanwhile, visit Duke on Nov. 17, the same day Michigan State visits Tennessee. UConn travels to Arizona the next day.

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