There is a few constants in life outside of Death and Taxes, and even fewer when talking about College Basketball. One of the constants that has remained over my lifetime is the Duke Blue Devils and their dominance of the ACC and the overall college basketball landscape. Duke is one of the sport's True Blue Blood programs and is playing like it this season. Head coach Jon Scheyer has the best team he has had in Durham. He is coaching a true National Title contender.
The calendar says January, and we have all watched enough basketball to know that teams who have been playing fantastically in January can miss the tournament. The reverse is also possible. Do I think Duke will miss the NCAA tournament? Not in the slightest; what I was trying to Illustrate with that comment is the fact that all games matter, and teams need to have a full body of work. Duke will likely get a one seed in the NCAA tournament, will likely win the ACC regular season, and will likely have one of the top picks in the NBA Draft. It looks like it is just another year in Durham.
I don’t want to gush about how good Duke looks right now because the road to an ACC title gets harder on Tuesday. The Pitt Panthers come to town, and it will be a game that will require Duke to be on top of their game of they may get beat. This also happens to be one of the best teams Jeff Capel has had during his time in Pittsburgh. Pitt comes in as one of the top 20 teams in the NET ranking and has already beaten Ohio State on the road. Obviously, Ohio State is not the same caliber of team as Duke, but that is a still a road win over a power conference team in their building. Those are hard to come by in this era of basketball.
Pitt isn’t going to be scared. Rest assured that Coach Capel will have them ready to play. They are going to want the resume-boosting win just as much as the Blue Devils do. The unfortunate part of this is that Duke is expected to win and has more to lose with a loss than Pitt would with a loss, even though the overall impact would be minimal. The Panthers can pose some unique challenges for Duke, if the Blue Devils do these three things they should win the game. If they struggle at all with any of these keys it will be a lot closer than many think.