Can Duke basketball go unbeaten in the ACC? Odds are strong; Blue Devils are that good
Duke basketball finds itself in the midst of as tough a stretch as this season’s ACC schedule will offer.
That the No. 4 Blue Devils won the first of a challenging two-game set by 27 points shows the ACC doesn’t look very challenging at all for Duke this season.
Saturday at Moody Coliseum, Duke played before a sold-out crowd against an SMU team that hadn’t lost since before Thanksgiving.
According to KenPom.com’s analytics, it projected as one of a handful of ACC games Duke had less than an 80% chance of winning this season.
Throw in the fact that Duke didn’t have head coach Jon Scheyer, who remained home in Durham battling the flu.
With all that, the Blue Devils led the Mustangs for all but 29 seconds, rolling to an 89-62 win that halted SMU’s seven-game winning streak while extending Duke’s to eight in a row.
Duke (12-2, 4-0 ACC) now returns home to play Pittsburgh on Tuesday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The Panthers (12-2, 3-0 ACC) represent the ACC’s second-best team when considering analytics and NCAA Tournament potential.
Duke, Pitt and ... who’s next?
Pitt is the only other ACC team rated among KenPom’s top 25 teams. The Panthers are No. 23 to Duke’s No. 2.
While the NET shows Duke at No. 3, it has Pitt at No. 14. The next closest ACC team to the Panthers? That would be No. 37 Clemson after SMU fell nine spots to No. 42 after being crushed by the Blue Devils. Nine ACC teams have NET ratings at No. 100 or worse.
Tuesday night, when beloved former Duke player and coach Jeff Capel brings his Pitt team to Durham, a showdown for the ACC lead looms.
Will it be that, though?
KenPom’s projections have Duke going 19-1 in ACC play this season. That computer system shows the Blue Devils with an 86% chance of beating Pitt on Tuesday night.
That’s pretty much how the rest of Duke’s 16 ACC games look, too. The Blue Devils have an 86% chance, or better, of winning all but two of them.
The only games that aren’t above 86% in that metric are games at Clemson on Feb. 8 and at North Carolina on March 8. Duke’s chances of winning are 72% at Clemson and 79% at UNC.
How many ACC games will Duke win?
Men play these games, not machines, of course. But the Blue Devils are playing so well, the idea of going unbeaten in ACC play isn’t out of the question.
Duke’s defense is among the best in the country, allowing 59 points per game. SMU entered Saturday’s game shooting 49.6% as a team this season but managed to hit only 34.8% while absorbing a pounding on its home court.
“They’re the biggest team in the country,” SMU coach Andy Enfield said. “So they have big guards, and they have interior players that are big and long. When you’re at the rim, they’ll be challenged. Every shot will be challenged. They are physical.”
Duke only blocks 3.6 shots per game, placing the Blue Devils in the middle of the pack nationally. But that doesn’t take into account the shots opponents don’t take in the lane, what with 7-2 Khaman Maluach, 6-9 Cooper Flagg and 6-9 Maliq Brown roaming the paint.
That defense has been Duke’s calling card all season but the Blue Devils’ improving offense is what’s overwhelming ACC opponents thus far.
The Blue Devils have shot better than 50% in their last three games, ACC wins over Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech and SMU. It’s a marked improvement.
Earlier in the season, Duke’s offense struggled while shooting 39.4% overall and making just 4 of 24 3-pointers while losing 77-72 to Kentucky in Atlanta.
When Duke returned to that city on Dec. 21 to shoot a season-best 56.4% while beating Georgia Tech, 82-56, Scheyer said the comparison to his team’s play on offense in those two games was night and day.
Things have only gotten brighter since then.
“It takes time,” Duke associate head coach Chris Carrawell said after leading Duke over SMU in Scheyer’s absence. “It takes time. I thought our defense was, of course, ahead of our offense. But you know, guys are learning how to play with each other.”
Flagg is really heating up, having scored 24 points in each of Duke’s last two games. He’s now averaging 17.4 points per game, hitting 44.7% of his shots and averaging 8.7 rebounds a game.
“My whole mindset this whole year has just been trying to get better every single day,” Flagg said. “I think kind of as we’ve got more comfortable as a team, we’ve come together more, and I think our offense has definitely sharpened up a lot, and that’s helped me as well.”
Flagg is doing a lot but not everything on offense. Tyrese Proctor has made 41.7% of his 3-pointers to average 11.6 points. Kon Knueppel, a 34.1% 3-point shooter with the potential to be even better, is averaging 12.7 points.
“A lot of guys have stepped up through a lot of different games,” Flagg said. “So it’s just such a team effort that having the guys like Tyrese and Kon on the court just help open everything up for me as well.”
That’s made for an incredibly potent team that Duke puts on the court this season. Is that good enough to go unbeaten in ACC play? Tuesday night’s game with Pitt will go a long way toward determining if that’s possible.
But the Blue Devils have a pretty good chance to pull it off.
This story was originally published January 5, 2025 at 5:30 AM.