Most college basketball programs would be thrilled just to win their conference tournament and earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. For a group of around 100 teams, the goal is to actually win a game in the NCAA Tournament. For a more select group, the goal is to make the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
For Duke Basketball, the goal is to cut down the nets – twice, preferably.
Even in his first season on the job, Jon Scheyer has inherited those expectations. Duke fans expect to win the ACC and make a deep run into the NCAA Tournament every season. Those are the expectations that Mike Krzyzewski built up to over more than four decades at Duke, and that have now been passed on to Scheyer.
The Blue Devils started the season 10-2 with quality wins over Xavier and Iowa and understandable losses to Kansas and Purdue, who are both vying for No. 1 seeds as we approach Selection Sunday.
From December 20 to January 23, Duke went 4-4 with double-digit losses to NC State and Wake Forest. They dropped from No. 7 in the preseason to unranked in the AP Top 25 and from No. 13 to No. 31 on KenPom. By late January, it looked like Duke was destined for a season of mediocrity, at least by their standards.
Fast-forward to March, and Duke is heading into the ACC Tournament having won nine of its last 11 games. That includes two wins over North Carolina that have acted as a sort of consolation for last season’s letdowns.
It’s also worth mentioning that one of Duke’s two losses in its most recent 11-game stretch came against Virginia on a questionable no-call. The ACC later admitted that the officials made a mistake and that Kyle Filipowski should have gone to the free-throw line, which almost certainly would have changed the result of that game.