Duke was supposed to play in the Battle for Atlantis Basketball Tournament in the Bahamas in November. There was talk about moving the tournament to South Dakota of all places. Now, they've decided to cancel the tournament for this year.
Duke was supposed to play in the Battle for Atlantis Basketball Tournament in the Bahamas in November. There was talk about moving the tournament to South Dakota of all places. Now, they've decided to cancel the tournament for this year.
Last edited by Natty_B; 09-18-2020 at 12:07 PM.
Oh snap!! This could be HUGE!!!
From the above link--
Matt Norlander
@MattNorlander
9m
Sources tell @CBSSports that Duke, which is not expected to play in the South Dakota/Battle 4 Atlantis event, is in the process of trying to build a multi-team event this season to be held at Duke and would center around a theme and backdrop of social-justice activism.
This event is still in the planning stages and subject to change, but if Duke was able to pull it off, it would obviously become one of the biggest nonconference events of the college basketball season.
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Yeah, this sounds cool. I am guessing the school wants to control COVID-19 exposure as much as possible and there would be a lot more control over an event that they plan and execute. I am guessing that South Dakota's relatively laissez faire attitude about COVID and mass social gatherings has got Duke more than a bit concerned.
You'd hope the field would include some marquee names considering that we are bowing out of a cool event.
Since this is a thread about the upcoming schedule, we should add to it that the Champions Classic will be played in an Orlando bubble
https://www.dukebasketballreport.com...uke-basketball
And, just to build some more excitement, I was happy to see this:
Henry Coleman III
@hencoleman3
I Promise you are going to LOVE this Duke Team!!!
It makes perfect sense. Duke has empty hotels rooms at the Washington Duke and J.B. Duke hotels just steps away from Cameron, plenty of space for other schools to practice, a lavishly staffed athletic department to make the arrangements and the resources of an enormous medical center less than a mile away. Duke has the leverage to get it done. It would be great to get some major opponents onboard. The only problems is that I won't be able to get in!
I wonder about other local teams. Would UNC and NCSU want to make this a shared thing? Would Duke want to work with them on this?
The Maui Tournament will be played in my backyard this year. Which would be exciting, except there's no fans.
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-ba...virus-pandemic
Eh, we'll see who the other teams are that get invited to play in Durham. I could see it being a bunch of HBCU's including NCCU. I mean, that would be a cool social justice awareness thing but in terms of basketball I was really looking forward to seeing the team against a strong Battle 4 Atlantis field. If the regular season is cut back in the number of games and with the talk of small schools losing the revenue from playing at the big schools, it just seems like Duke would go the route of bringing in a bunch of small schools to play 3 games or so.
If Duke can somehow manage to convince other power conference teams to come to a bubble in Durham that would be awesome but I think that would be a hard sell considering other P5 teams have tournament bubbles and could host their own bubble of small school opponents.
Last edited by mo.st.dukie; 09-18-2020 at 01:57 PM.
Interestingly, ALL the other teams confirmed playing in SD except Duke. That is a LOADED field. Alas, could also be cool to host a tournament, but will be hard to pull off - but if anybody can, it's Duke and Coach K.
As far as hotel rooms in the WaDuke, some of those are being used for student housing - well, at least, for the basketball team. I recognize that is only ~15 rooms, no idea if other students got placed there.
The issue is it's widely reported that the Champions Classic will be the first week of December in Orlando. So Durham to South Dakota bubble to Orlando bubble is about impossible. I think this idea is way cooler and IMO the interest from other schools (not just P5 this isn't football) will be big. We're spoiled but playing at Cameron (even without fans) is a big deal.
I think having an event with local HBCUs could work--because Duke has had so much privilege over the years (and so much more money) to make it interesting develop a formula to handicap the teams. In other words if Duke is playing WSSU and their basketball budget is 1/20th of Duke's, then WSSU will be spotted a certain number of points (20? 30?) to start the game and Duke would have to outscore them to win. If it already an exhibition due to being in different NCAA levels etc, it could work?
There’s now a press release saying that the tournament that was originally supposed to have been at the Atlantis resort but was then rumored to be heading to South Dakota has been officially cancelled. The report that it hadn’t really been cancelled was wrong.
People are really confusing things. The Battle 4 Atlantis tournament and its organizers/sponsors are not holding the event (i.e. "canceled.") However, there is an effort to have the exact same field and same structure in a tournament in SD, yet to have an official name. Reportedly, Duke is the only team that isn't on board with the idea. QED
#allsubjecttochange
Duke could probably schedule its own 4 game tournament in NYC and get a good field with a couple phone calls. The Atlantis field is better than what we could schedule on our own.
I don't know what the concern is. Is Coach K or the administration concerned about COVID-19 for himself, staff, or players? Does Coach K want to avoid the 3 team tournament because it takes up too many away/neutral spots? (He mentioned rethinking the trip to Maui in a presser last time. We only had 18 ACC games when this contract was signed instead of 20.)
Who is going to back renting out the venue to play it in? There won't be fans there, so the only revenue is going to be from TV, and honestly that isn't likely to pay much, even with Duke playing. If they want anything to happen, hosting in Cameron makes more sense, just from financial reasons alone.
Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."
TV? I am skeptical that you are going to get decent non-conference opponents by holding the games at Duke. Kansas tried this a couple times long before COVID-19. They had to play a home-home with Arizona to get a quality opponent and had the rest with other smaller schools that did not help NET rankings. Noting that I have not seen schedules, the best case scenario might be Gardner-Webb, VCU, and Georgetown with a return to Georgetown in a future year.
A full round-robin for the Champions Classic would be enough for the NET rankings on a 27 game schedule when you have 18-20 ACC games.
Pure speculation/fantasy here, but I'm wondering if the teams would ever consider turning the Champions Classic into a three-game MTE? The teams could bubble for a week and then play round robin over five days. It would be brutal to have to play three games against elite opponents that early in the season, but a ton of fun for us as fans!
Also, the title of this thread did not indicate that it was a Duke-only discussion, so I will also pass along that the Maui Invitational is being moved to Asheville, NC. Quite a home court advantage the CHeats will have. Also, Louisville and Kentucky have announced they are planning to host small MTE tournaments on their home courts. I think there's a high likelihood that Duke and many other top programs do the same. It allows them to get 2-3 games in against opponents of their choosing on their home floor, in a bubbled format.