Duke basketball: Here’s how the Blue Devils can still make the NCAA Tournament

Duke basketball is surging at the right time as the Blue Devils look to play their way in the NCAA Tournament and continue their streak to 25 consecutive trips to March Madness.

After being left for dead a few weeks ago it looks like the Duke Blue Devils have a good chance to reach the NCAA Tournament. A well-timed four-game winning streak, including this week’s blowout of Syracuse and a one-point triumph against Virginia, has elevated the Blue Devils back into the bubble conversation.

Let’s take a deeper dive into Duke’s team sheet and figure out what the path is for the Blue Devils to get to March Madness right now.

Duke basketball still has a clear path to March Madness

The Blue Devils’ winning streak has been a big boost to the team’s NET ranking, which is now inside the top 50 at no. 47. The Virginia game added a Quadrant 1 win to Duke’s profile, which improved their record against the top competition in college basketball to 2-3.

The issue here is that Mike Krzyzewski’s team has some highly questionable losses as well, including a combined five losses against Quadrant 2 and 3 opponents, with the worst being a home defeat against Notre Dame and a road loss to a short-handed Miami Hurricanes team earlier this month.

The good news for Duke is that their remaining regular-season games are winnable and can help their tournament profile since all come against bubble teams. Saturday’s date against Louisville is critical since the Cardinals already have a head-to-head win over the Blue Devils, but a COVID pause left them looking very sluggish in a beating at the hands of North Carolina last weekend.

Duke will also need to find a way to win some key road games next week against Georgia Tech and North Carolina, each of whom needs wins to bolster their own tournament resumes. The Blue Devils are 3-4 so far this season so it should be safe to assume they will at least split these two road contests.

A 2-1 finish to the regular season would send Duke to the ACC Tournament with a 13-9 record that includes an 11-6 mark in conference play. That record should put the Blue Devils in a position to get a second-round matchup against a lower-tier opponent before a quarterfinal date with a team like North Carolina or Clemson.

Losing to the play-in winner would be disastrous, adding an anchor loss to Duke’s resume that could sink it in the eyes of the selection committee. Finding a way to get to the ACC Tournament semifinals, which would pretty much guarantee a matchup with one of the ACC’s top three teams (Virginia, Virginia Tech, Florida State), should be enough to seal an at-large bid in a year with a weak bubble.

The more direct route to March Madness would be to just win the ACC’s automatic bid in the conference tournament. Having a win over Virginia is certainly a nice confidence booster for Krzyzewski’s team, but it is a much trickier path to have to beat at least two of the ACC’s top dogs to get the automatic bid.

It seems like the first path is certainly the easier one for Duke and the fact that the Blue Devils have national name recognition may unconsciously bias the selection committee to give their resume more weight than a similar one from a program with lesser national pedigree. The magic number of wins for the Blue Devils appears to be 15, which should be enough to punch a ticket to dance and avoid missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1995.

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