Another day brings more 2025-26 scheduling news as it pertains to the Texas Tech basketball team. The latest report is one that is going to get Red Raider fans fired up, for certain.
According to The Field of 68 podcast, head coach Grant McCasland and his team will take on college basketball blue blood Duke on December 20. What's more, the game is reportedly set to take place at the legendary Madison Square Garden in New York City.
This is the latest big-time non-conference game Tech has set up for the upcoming season. The Red Raiders have also set up non-conference games against LSU (in Fort Worth) and Wake Forest, and either Purdue or Memphis (in the Bahamas).
This is a wise move for a program that needed to beef up its non-conference scheduling after years of playing one of the weakest non-con slates of any power-conference team. That is because these marquee games will boost Tech's NET ranking while giving the rebuilt Red Raiders a chance to test themselves before the rigors of Big 12 play.
Duke is obviously a team that will always carry a ton of weight in the college basketball world. Though Coach K is no longer running the show in Durham, his protégé, Jon Scheyer, has kept the Blue Devils relevant in the national conversation.
This past season, Scheyer took Duke to the Final Four. In fact, Duke came within just minutes of taking down Houston before an epic collapse cost them a shot at a National Championship.
Scheyer has been Duke's head coach for three seasons. He's never won fewer than 27 games in that time, and in 2024-25, he guided his team to the ACC Championship and a 35-4 overall record.
Despite massive roster turnover this offseason, many think the Blue Devils will be a contender again in 2025-26. Though key players from last season like Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel, Khaman Maluach, and Tyrese Proctor are all expected to be high NBA Draft picks this year, Duke is bringing in 5-star freshman center Cameron Boozer and his twin brother, Cayden (a 4-star point guard). They are the sons of legendary Duke big man Carlos Boozer.
Of course, this won't be the first time these programs have met at Madison Square Garden. On December 20, 2018, Tech and Duke met at the world's most famous arena as well.
That night, the No. 2 Blue Devils, led by 17 points from Zion Williamson, scored a 69-58 win over the No. 12 Red Raiders. However, the star of the game was Red Raider forward Jarrett Culver, who almost single-handedly led his team to the win by scoring a game-high 25 points, pulling down six rebounds, and handing out four assists.
Texas Tech fans are hoping that the 2025-26 season follows a similar script to the 2018-19 season because later in the 2018-19 campaign, Tech wound up playing for the National Championship. Maybe history will be a little kinder to Tech this season when the Red Raiders meet Duke and the game goes the way of the guys in red. But regardless, the fact that Tech is stepping up in competition is a huge move in the right direction for a program that has aspirations of winning it all next season.