Duke Rewind: Blue Devils win at Rupp Arena in 1980, 1998

What's March without Duke Tournament basketball? With this year's ACC and NCAA Tournaments cancelled, we'll go back in time to look at the top Blue Devils postseason games from each date in March and early April. Special thanks to SportsReference.com for boxscores and the Duke Library for the newspaper archive.

In addition to the two NCAA games we featured, Duke played two other times in March Madness on the 13, both in Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky.

In 1980, Duke advanced to the Mideast Regional final against Purdue after beating Kentucky 55-54 in Lexington. Duke was the 4-seed and Kentucky, by virtue of its top seed, got the benefit of playing on its home court, giving Duke a true road game in the tournament.

The Blue Devils held Kyle Macy to 6 points on 3-of-9 shooting and future NBA “ahead of Jordan” draft pick Sam Bowie to 2 points on 1-of-4 shooting. Fred Cowan led the Wildcats with 26 points, shooting 12-of-14 from the line.

Mike Gminski scored 17 points with 7 rebounds and three blocks for Duke. Gene Banks added 11 points 6 boards and five assists. Vince Taylor scored 15.

In 1998 Duke was again at Rupp arena, which was a little more of a neutral site that time around. Duke was the No. 1 in the South Region and beat 16-seed Radford 99-63 to go on to face Oklahoma State.

Trajan Langdon went scoreless 0-for-7 from the field, but he was picked up by Roshown McLeod who scored 23. Chris Carrawell added 16, and Elton Brand had 12 points and 6 rebounds. Shane Battier and Mike Chappell came off the bench for 12 points each. Steve Wojciechowski had six assists, as Duke built a 51-19 halftime lead and cruised to its 30 win of the year.