College basketball is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.
Saturday night, this sentiment could not have been truer, and the ultimate beneficiary of the sweet chaos of the penultimate weekend of the regular season was none other than America’s favorite team to hate.
The Duke men’s basketball team headed to Syracuse for its monster 97-72 win, with sophomore center Mark Williams leading the way with a career-high 28 points. It was a great win for the team in head coach Mike Krzyzewski’s final trip to upstate New York, but meanwhile around the country, the walls delineating the late-season hierarchy burned to the ground.
No. 4 Purdue lost on a dramatic late Michigan State 3-pointer.
No. 6 Kentucky fell victim to the Eric Musselman-led Arkansas squad.
No. 3 Auburn was sunk by No. 17 Tennessee as the SEC standings tightened even further.
No. 5 Kansas was left in the dust by No. 10 Baylor.
No. 2 Arizona got blown away by Colorado.
Then, to cap off the night, No. 1 Gonzaga was ousted by No. 23 St. Mary’s.
For the first time ever, teams ranked first through sixth in the AP Poll all lost on the same day. With all the dominoes in front of it toppled over, the seventh-ranked team stood with a path to the throne as the entire landscape of college basketball was shaken by an earthquake.
Duke—which has played two games against ranked teams all season and suffered two home losses to unranked conference foes—somehow now has a route to a top spot in the poll and a position on the top line in its region come NCAA tournament time.
Duke fans may need to refrain from getting too excited by the chaos, especially since all of the aforementioned losses were on the road. But come on, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?
A few weeks ago, it seemed like Duke would be on the outside looking in on the No. 1-seed conversation, but here we are again staring down the wild uncertainty that is brought by the last two weeks before the bracket is set and the Blue Devils are in the center of the conversation. As of Friday, ESPN’s bracket expert Joe Lunardi had Duke on the No. 2-seed line—and the NET rankings didn’t even have Duke in the top 10, but the ACC’s curse of a poor showing up and down the conference may be the greatest gift for Duke as the losses pile up next to the other top teams’ names during next week's conference tournaments. A No. 1 seed could be in its future.
Just to refresh, Duke beat Kentucky and Gonzaga at neutral sites in November, and currently owns the nation’s best win percentage against Quad 1 teams (minimum five games played) with a 5-1 record. The volume of tough games maybe hasn’t been there, but when the big stage comes, the Blue Devils do exceptionally well.
Of course, the Blue Devils still have two more regular-season games left and three in the ACC tournament, including one against North Carolina in Krzyzewski’s last-ever game at his home of 42 years.
But as it stands right now, the argument could be made that Duke is the best team in the country.
No. 1 in next week’s rankings? A longshot.
But the only one of this week's top seven to enter the final week of the regular season on a winning streak? A certainty.
They still have some work to do before they may actually be the best team in the country, but a team that has won six straight—including dispatches of Clemson, Florida State and Syracuse and a tough road win at Virginia—as well as 11 of its last 12 should probably be taken seriously as a threat to go far in March. The Blue Devils have improved as the season has continued, and KenPom now has them at No. 5. This Duke team might just be embodying “getting hot at the right time.”
It’s open season, ladies and gentlemen. The rules to which we abode for the last several months are out the window.
March has come early, so grab the popcorn.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.
Micah Hurewitz is a Trinity senior and was previously a sports managing editor of The Chronicle's 118th volume.