ANAHEIM, Calif., March 26 (UPI) -- Second-seeded Kansas will try to get Coach Roy Williams over a huge hump Thursday night when it meets No. 3 Duke in a West Region semifinal of the NCAA Tournament.
The matchup brings together programs that have combined for five national championships.
While Williams has won 415 games in his career, he is 0-3 against Duke and Coach Mike Krzyzewski. Kansas last beat Duke on April 2, 1988 en route to its second national title.
The schools have met four times in the NCAA Tournament and the Blue Devils have won three of them. Duke won the last one with a 69-64 triumph in the second round of the East Region on March 19, 2000.
The Blue Devils lead the series, 6-1.
Williams, a former North Carolina assistant, has plenty of knowledge about the Duke program.
"The way they've done it, with true student-athletes," Williams said. "They're awfully difficult to recruit against, I can tell you that, because we haven't had very much success recruiting against them. Nick Collison is the only player we've ever gotten that they wanted.
"They've gotten a lot of other ones that we wanted."
Kansas (27-7) played perhaps its best game of the season in Saturday's 108-76 rout of Arizona State. Kirk Hinrich scored 24 points and Nick Collison added 22 for the Jayhawks, who shot a school-record 68 percent.
Collison has played well to this point and is shooting 75 percent in the two games. Keith Langford scored 41 points in the first two games.
Duke (26-6) survived a tough matchup with Colorado State in the first round before Dahntay Jones scored a career-high 28 points in an 86-60 rout of Central Michigan. Freshman J.J. Redick netted 26 points and made five three-pointers for the Blue Devils, who forced 40 turnovers in the first two games.
Krzyzewski appears to be most concerned about Collison's impact on the game.
"Collison's completely different than those two big kids," Krzyzewski said. "Collison is a very versatile player. He can go outside and inside, he plays at the high post. Because he's involved in screening opportunities for his teammates, you don't know where to find him all the time."
Krzyzewski is 10-3 all-time in regional semifinals.
The winner will meet Arizona or Notre Dame in Saturday's regional final.
