ACC Basketball power rankings: Clemson and Georgia Tech rises, Duke falls

3. Duke (5-3, 0-1)

Mike Krzyzewski’s retirement brought to end a long era of success for the Blue Devils but it certainly didn’t mean the end of success for this Blue Blood program. Jon Scheyer has long been an elite recruiter and has looked a competent head coach, leading last year’s Duke squad to the ACC Tournament title. This year, the Blue Devils entered the season with sky-high potential, returning a few elite pieces and adding one of the nation’s top freshman classes into the mix.

The Blue Devils got a punch in the mouth early in the season, losing at home to a very talented Arizona squad in the first week of the season. They looked better the next two weeks, including a win over Michigan State in the Champions Classic, but things weren’t great this past week. Duke had their first two true road games of the season and were handed two losses, falling at Arkansas as part of the ACC/SEC Challenge and against Georgia Tech to open up conference play.

There have been some challenging games on this schedule in the earlygoing, but three losses with this amount of talent seems almost impossible for Duke. The Blue Devils are still getting great play from Kyle Filipowski, Tyrese Proctor, and Jeremy Roach, but are waiting for more from the freshmen and certainly haven’t done enough as a team to this point in the season. It’s likely that this team will only get better as the season progresses; don’t write off Duke after less than a month.