Duke Basketball: Previewing 2021-22 ACC schedule after non-conference play
December Opponents and Predictions
December 22 vs. Virginia Tech
Duke’s first conference opponent will be the Virginia Tech Hokies who they play on Wednesday, December 22nd in Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Hokies come into Wednesday’s game boasting an 8-4 record, with wins against Maryland, and St. Bonaventure, and losses to Memphis, Xavier, Wake Forest, and Dayton.
Virginia Tech’s leading scorer is Keve Aluma who holds an average of 14.2 points, 6.1 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 0.7 steals, and 1.0 blocks per game. The Hokies play somewhat of a small-ball lineup with Nahiem Alleyne, Hunter Cattoor, and Storm Murphy, all guards, all averaging around 30+ minutes per game, with their first man off the bench, Darius Maddox, also being a guard.
It will be interesting to see how Duke adjusts to this seeing Duke plays a little bigger with Wendell Moore jr., Paolo Banchero, and Mark Williams all getting significant minutes for Duke, and the only two guards for the Blue Devils being Keels, and Roach.
Prediction:
According to ESPN’s Basketball Power Index, Duke has a 71.9% chance to win this game, and I think they do just that as they beat the Hokies by double-digits.
December 29 @ Clemson
Duke’s second road game of the season will be at Littlejohn Coliseum in Clemson, South Carolina, where they will take on the Clemson Tigers. Clemson has had an interesting start to their season, to say the least, they’re 8-4 with their only win against a major conference team being against South Carolina, who as of Sunday, December 19th, were ranked 109th in the KenPom rankings.
That being said, nobody is quite sure just how good, or bad Clemson is, because they don’t have any notable wins, and they only have one bad loss, as they lost to Rutgers on the road, who was ranked 99th in the KenPom rankings as of Sunday.
Like Virginia Tech, Clemson also plays a smaller lineup with three guards averaging around 30 minutes per game each, and with that, I would pay close attention to Wednesday’s game against Virginia Tech, because it might indicate how the Blue Devils will fare against Clemson, a week later.
Prediction:
Duke has a 62.8% chance to beat Clemson according to ESPN’s BPI, probably down a little bit than what it might be if the game were in Durham, but I wouldn’t expect it to be as close as the Basketball Power Index seems to think it might be. Duke should be able to handle the Tigers, I wouldn’t say with ease, but I also wouldn’t expect this one to be all too close.