No. 10 Duke is back to not being back again, right?
The Blue Devils went down to Coral Gables on Saturday afternoon and lost 55-50 to Miami. It’s their second consecutive loss, coming just three days and 1,500 miles after the Blue Devils lost at Syracuse.
That’s the kind of week that will probably convince people that the Blue Devils were, in fact, fraudulent all along.
And frankly, that’s a pretty dumb way to view what’s happened to Duke over the course of the last four days.
Because here’s the truth: Duke lost by five points on the road in league play to a team that’s currently sitting as a No. 8 seed in the most recent NBC Sports bracket projection and in a game where they were only favored by one. They lost on the same floor that North Carolina lost on by 15 points earlier this month to a team that is now tied with them in the ACC standings. They lost that game playing without their starting point guard, Grayson Allen, who sat out with an ankle injury. And playing without their starting point guard, the Blue Devils scored just .794 points-per-possession in a game where Luke Kennard and Jayson Tatum combined to shoot just 10-for-36 from the floor.
That’s not a bad loss.
Neither is losing on the road to a Syracuse team that is just a game behind them in the ACC standings on a banked-in, buzzer-beating 23-footer in a game where Allen shot like he was shaving points in a game where he tried to battle through the ankle injury that kept him out of the lineup on Saturday. For what it’s worth, the spread in that game was Duke winning by three.
The point here isn’t to makes excuses for Duke.
The point is that taking a pair of close road losses in conference play while battling through some injuries does not a bad team make.
The ACC is a bear this year. North Carolina is the only team in the conference that doesn’t have at least five league losses with more than a week left in the regular season, and they might be the best team in college basketball. We knew this heading into the season, and it’s proven to be true. Everyone took their lumps in league play, and Duke was no different.
I’m not here to tell you what you should think of Duke. Personally, I think that a team with Allen, Kennard and Tatum that defended the way they defended today can win a national title. If you think their lack of depth, post presence and interior defense cannot win six games in March, there’s some validity to that.
What I am here to tell you is that these last four days should not change your opinion of them.
Winning on the road in league play is hard, and Duke learned that the hard way this week.