However, the difference in circumstances must have been immeasurable in Florida’s last road basketball game in the pending house call of Duke vs. the Gators on Tuesday night, when the two programs last shared the court at historic Cameron Indoor Stadium.
On December 9, 1998, Billy Donovan brought his meteoric-rise Gators undefeated in five games to face the third-place Blue Devils and their packed roster of seven McDonald’s All-Americans. The game was presented as a measuring stick for Donovan’s fast-growing UF program, which had taken the recruiting trails by storm and rocked some blue-blood basketball cages along the way.
How did the Gators measure up? He didn’t.
Duke defeated Florida 116–86, scoring the most points ever against a UF team. Take that, Billy D. Now go back to your football school.
“We felt invincible going in there, but they beat us pretty good,” recalls former UF guard Teddy Dupay, now 46, but then he was a standout freshman on the team, going up against players like Elton Brand, Shane Battier, Will Avery, Trajan Langdon and Corey Maggette. All I remember is Maggette doing pull-ups at the rim the entire second half.
Ah, but things changed. That UF team reached its first NCAA Tournament under Donovan and advanced to the Sweet 16. That Duke team played for the national championship, but lost to Connecticut. The following season – just 15 months after that loss in Cameron – the fifth-seeded Gators and the top-seeded Blue Devils met again in the round of 16 of the 2000 NCAA Tournament in Syracuse, New York. Duke was ranked No. 1 and the region’s No. 1 overall seed.
Florida won 87–78.
Since then the matter has escalated further. For both programs.
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Fast forward to the present day. That line of students (aka the Cameron Crazies) stretched down the hallways of this 85-year-old arena and were camped out in the rain, in near-freezing temperatures, getting a chance to watch their undefeated and fourth-ranked Blue Devils (8-0) prevail over the 15th-ranked Gators (5-2) in an ACC/SEC Challenge matchup on their home field.
Of course, this will happen reigning ncaa champion Gators.
They’re going to be cheering for us, UF junior forward thomas hoff Said. We will be excited for them too.
It was UF – anyone remember? — who stole Duke’s Final Four thunder in San Antonio last March, rallying from 12 points behind in the second half to beat Houston for the crown; The same Houston that 48 hours earlier had stunned the Blue Devils by coming back from down by 13 with four minutes left (by nine with just two minutes left) and sent Cooper Flagg on his NBA path one game early.
Now, Duke wants what Florida has. Think about that.
Right now, think about this: In the nearly three decades since Cameron’s last call, Duke has won three national championships and been to seven Final Fours; Florida has won three national championships and reached five Final Fours.
So, when the two leagues were sized up and these ACC/SEC matchups were picked, the folks at ESPN knew exactly what they were doing.
We work very hard to take advantage of opportunities like this, where you get a chance to coach at places like this and compete against really good programs, UF coaches. toad golden Said. You want to make sure (we) enjoy and take some time to appreciate the opportunity. But after that, if you’re not locked in, it could be a long night. So, you want to make sure that you’re focusing on the right things. I think we’ll do a good job at it.
It’s surprising that these two programs have only played twice – at the 2016 Coaches vs. Cancer and the 2017 PK80 Invitational – since that epic UF upset in the 2000 tournament yielded the program’s first-ever win over a No. 1 ranked team.
And it seems as if that 30-point loss was the start of something.
We were undefeated and felt invincible, but that was good for us. “They beat us pretty good,” recalls former Gators guard Teddy Dupay, now 46. He was completely cast, which is always the hardest part about playing the Duke. They always have very good players.
Same is the case again in 2025-26. The Blue Devils may have the nation’s best player at 6-foot-9, Cameron Boozer, son of former Duke standout Carlos Boozer, but they will also have the built-in advantage of being stunned by opponents when they play basketball royalty for the first time in their castle on Tuesday.
I heard that the field is not that big. It’s too fast, said the UF junior urban clawzarWho also learned all about Cameroon (listed capacity of 9,314) while growing up playing basketball in Slovenia. I think the fans are really close to the court, so it will be really fun to play in that environment.
The Gators thought the same thing in ’98. They also had a pair of rookies from McDonald in Dupay and Mike Miller. Center Udonis Haslem, another rising star, was his classmate. They were the new kids on the collegiate block and brimming with confidence.
They walked away hurt and with perspective.
“There was a lot more noise there than (Cameron), but the fans made up the difference,” Dupay said. They choreographed and synchronized everything. And they were smart about it.
Cruel too. UF starting point guard Eddie Shannon, who lost an eye last summer due to a degenerative condition, was welcomed with a sign that read, There is no ‘I’ in Shannon. seriously.
When the blue wave arrived the game was tied at 23 nine minutes later; 40-18 run in the last 11 minutes of the half. When it was complete, Avery had set a school record with eight 3-pointers (on 10 attempts), with Langdon adding 20 points and Maggette 19 and nine rebounds. Duke shot 50% for the game, nearly 70% from beyond the arc (16 of 23) and outshot UF 46–32 on the glass.
Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski later said, “It was the biggest double-digit game I’ve ever been involved in,” and gave the visitors a compliment of sorts. Actually, I don’t know why (the margin) was so high.
Donovan was more realistic.
That’s why we needed to play this kind of game. “Hopefully, our guys understand that that’s what happens if you fall asleep against a good team,” Donovan said. It’s just one game, but to be the elite team we want to be, we need to play teams like Duke wire to wire throughout the game.
The Gators were college basketball’s most elite team last season, but it’s ’25-26 and they’re finding something. He needs to shoot it better, take care of the ball better and defend the paint better.
Florida isn’t expected to win this game (the Gators are a 9-point underdog), but if he can do some of the things above a little better at Cameron, he can do them anywhere.
You don’t have to be afraid to fail in this game, so that should be welcomed by our group, because we’ve been a team that – which is typical for our program – has had all the pressure on us up to this point this year, Golden said. Hopefully, this will give us some relief. We can play with a little more freedom and not worry about making shots. Just go out there and try to play hard.
And just like in the game, enjoy the fun atmosphere.
Or as Dupay said, throw those newbies to the wolves and see what happens.
hey, this Worked first.
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