College Basketball Game of the Week: No. 2 Auburn vs. No. 9 Duke

One of the most electric environments in college basketball, Cameron Indoor in Durham, North Carolina, will be the site of an epic top-10 match-up between the No. 2 Auburn Tigers and the No. 9 Duke Blue Devils.

The 7-0 Tigers are coming off of a Maui Invitational win, where they racked up huge wins against No. 5 Iowa State, No. 12 North Carolina and in the championship game, they beat an unranked but for-real Memphis squad. In the season's second game, the Tigers got a huge win over No. 4 Houston.

The 5-2 Blue Devils are coming off an easy 22-point win against Seattle University. Before that, Duke suffered losses from top-ranked Kansas and No. 19 Kentucky, which has made a name for itself since then, climbing up to No. 4. Despite these losses, Duke has a big win that it put on its resumé when it handled No. 17 Arizona, 69-55.

Auburn has a player of the year candidate on their team, Forward Johni Broome. The 6-foot-10 fifth-year senior brings plenty of experience to his team. Not only does he lead his team with 30.1 minutes per game on a team coached by notoriously strict Bruce Pearl, but he is also bringing down 12.9 rebounds per game, which puts him in the top spot in the country.

To counter that, the Blue Devils have freshman guard Cooper Flagg. In case you haven’t heard of him, he’s one of the best freshmen in the nation. He’s leading his team in almost every statistic.

Kon Kneuppel is another talented freshman on the Blue Devils. He comes in second to Flagg in many metrics the two players lead in.

The Blue Devils don’t only have talented freshmen on their team, but they also have gifted upperclassmen on their team. Tyrese Proctor, Caleb Foster, Maliq Brown and Mason Gillis, to name a few.

On top of their talented roster, they have Coach Jon Scheyer at the helm, who pulls all of the right strings. In his two previous seasons, he led Duke to a conference tournament title in 2023 and an NCAA Tournament Round of 32 Game last year. It’s a tall task to relieve the legendary Coach Krzyzewski, but Scheyer has done it well.

With Pearl being the head coach of Auburn, he manages his bench differently. Everyone on his team plays smaller amounts of minutes until they prove themselves as a force to be reckoned with. This, in turn, means that the stats of all of his players are more evenly distributed, except for Broome, because he has proved himself in the two full years he has played for Pearl.

The Tigers have a highly regarded freshman on their team named Tahaad Pettiford. It doesn’t sound all that good, but he’s averaging 9.6 points per game, which is pretty good considering he has averaged just under 20 minutes per game.

Pettiford also does not turn the ball over very often. He’s averaging 1.1 turnovers per game, which is impressive, considering he is a freshman point guard on a team with a difficult schedule to this point.

The Tigers have another weapon this year, and that is scoring at an insane clip this season. Chad Baker-Mazara only averages 21.9 minutes per game but scores 12.6 points.

This is a must-watch game on Wednesday night at 9:15. Will Auburn continue to prove themselves this year, or will Duke get a huge early season win?

Chase Yingling is a third-year majoring in digital and print journalism. To contact him, email cey5100@psu.edu.