Although Duke Basketball looked unstoppable through the early part of the season, the recent two-game losing streak showed the areas they need to improve upon if they are going to cut down the nets in March.
Duke basketball had been rolling on like a freight train. A long winning streak with a huge average margin of victory had made the Stephen F. Austin loss look like the aberration that it probably was. An inexplicable blip on the way to a regular-season ACC crown that has surprisingly eluded Duke in recent years.
After all, the ACC is in a down year; Louisville has looked inconsistent and beatable while FSU remains an athletic terror of a team but are good for a couple of losses every year that they probably shouldn’t have. The Blue Devils can easily be thrown into this category as well. Even though they sat at #2, many believed they were the best team in the country, myself included.
Then the wheels came off, for Duke anyway, where losing two games in a row can be reason for an all-out panic. The thirty point blowout of Miami righted the ship in the win column, but we can look to those two losses to see what Duke needs to do to be the Duke it can be. No, not have the best recruiting class and not make it to a final four, to preemptively shut down the naysayers out there, although the truth does hurt me more than I would like to admit.
That brings us to three things the Duke Blue Devils need to work on before the calendar hits March: