In some respects basketball scheduling in 2025-26 is what it ever was – aimed to provide enough favorable game sites and timing of contests to protect a coach’s job, satisfy existing relationships, entertain fans, and fashion a formidable oncourt unit. Not necessarily in that order.
Increasingly, schedules also are conjured to produce a propitious program profile based on known criteria when it comes time to award NCAA bids.
Duke’s 2025-26 schedule is particularly crafty (a tip of the hat here to the work
of Mike Schrage, special assistant to the head coach). The Blue Devils face enough prominent opponents to boost their postseason prospects without taking undue risks.
As has been Duke practice for decades, strong opponents are met on neutral courts, an approach apt to avoid hostile crowds but attract national attention and goodly revenue – Texas in Charlotte (modestly neutral, already played), Kansas this week at Madison Square Garden, Arkansas in Chicago, Texas Tech at Madison Square Garden, Michigan in Washington, D.C. There’s also a visit to Michigan State on Dec. 6.
The Michigan game is something of a rarity, a major nonconference matchup late in the regular season. Duke has often squeezed in a measuring challenge of this sort; for years St. John’s was the preferred opponent. This year Virginia added a similar February interruption of its league schedule, facing Ohio State in Nashville, Tenn.
Duke also plays the fewest home contests among ACC squads, with 16 counting that Charlotte meeting with the Longhorns. Five other league teams have 17 home games scheduled. Cal has 21, Miami 20.
Late-season game sites become a significant factor; the Cavaliers, for example, get to play four of their final five regular-season contests at JPJ Arena. (Adding a degree of difficulty, the Cavs’ sole road game in that period is at Duke.) At the other end of the finish-line spectrum, BC, host to Tommy Amaker’s Harvard on Thanksgiving eve, plays three of its last four on the road as do Louisville, Pitt, and SMU.
Meanwhile it appears the ’26 schedules for Cal and Georgia Tech are at the let’s-look-better-even-if-we-aren’t stage, with each loading up on home contests to conjure respectability a year after posting losing records. In Cal’s case eight straight losing efforts. (Not that you’d know the dimensions of that unfortunate run from the ACC record book, which for the second time in the Bears’ two-year league tenure ignores the school’s past. Stanford is similarly shorn of its history, although SMU is not.)
The Golden Bears play a single one of their first 15 games outside the Golden State, including a matchup with heavyweight in-state rival UCLA in campus-adjacent San Francisco. Mark Madsen’s team, which finished in 15th place (of 18) in the ACC last season, shuns venturing onto the road until early January with consecutive visits to Virginia and Virginia Tech. Then the league schedule allows it to recalibrate by hosting Duke and UNC in consecutive home meetings.
Georgia Tech, where Damon Stoudamire aims to resuscitate a program that’s had a single NCAA appearance in 15 years (2021), likewise takes a comfortable route forward, with 13 of its first 15 games in-state. Until the Yellow Jackets go to Duke on New Year’s eve, their only significant test was a close loss at perennial rival Georgia the other day.
Clemson and Miami are similarly situated to get off to strong starts, building team unity or at least togetherness by sticking close to home in the early going. UNC and NC State similarly play two-thirds or more of their calendar-year 2025 games at friendly venues.
Wake Forest by contrast looks quite serious about improving its NCAA prospects, not only taking on big-time rivals but avoiding extended resorts to home cooking.
| HOME RUNS Home Games Scheduled, 2025-26 (In-State Games Against Non-League Counted as Home, @ Indicates at Duke) |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team | Total | Duke | Away | Note |
| BC | 17 | @ | 3 of 4 | No UNC |
| Cal | 21 | 2/14 | final 2 | 14 first 15 H |
| C | 19 | @ | 1 of 4 | SC 10 first 13 |
| D | 16 | x | 2 of 4 | Mich 2/21 in DC |
| FS | 17 | 1/3 | 2 of 4 | No UL |
| GT | 19 | @ | 2 of 4 | 11 first 13 in Ga. |
| UL | 17 | 1/8,@ | 3 of 4 | 6 first 7 H |
| UM | 18 | x | final 2 | 12 of 13 Fla start |
| NC | 15 | 2/7,@ | 1 of 4 | 10 first 14 H |
| NS | 17 | 3/2 | 2 of 4 | 11 first 15 H |
| ND | 20 | @ | 1 of 4 | last 5 H at end ’25 |
| UP | 17 | 2/10 | 3 of 4 | 9 first 12 H |
| SMU | 18 | 1/10 | 3 of 4 | first 7 H |
| Sta | 18 | 1/17 | final 2 | 5 last 7 away |
| SU | 18 | @ | 2 of 3 | 7 H 12/2 to 12/31 |
| V | 17 | @ | 1 of 5 | 2/14 OhSt @Nash |
| VT | 17 | 1/31 | 2 of 3 | 5 H in row 12/6-31 |
| WF | 18 | @ | 3 of 5 | H no more 3 row |
