By: Caleb Zuver
February 22, 2025
I miss getting up on a Saturday morning for a big time regular season ACC matchup that has real implications on who will win the conference title. Waiting all day for a prime time tip-off with ESPN’s number one crew of Dan Shulman and Jay Bilas on the call. Those games felt big because they were.
Now, I can’t even remember the last time I felt like that during a regular season Saturday without North Carolina being the team on the other side. Taking out those games (because Duke-UNC will always feel big), the last time I felt the high stakes of a regular season game was with Duke at Virginia in 2023 when Kyle Filipowski was fouled on a shot that would have won the game in regulation, but didn’t get the call.
The ACC is probably the weakest of all the power-five conferences this year. And the failures of one of the sport's traditionally premier conferences has left some fans and pundits with doubts about the league's best team: Duke. But the people displaying the most skepticism have their definition of the term “battle-tested” upside down.
In casual basketball conversations about who can win the national title, the term “battle-tested” gets thrown around ad nauseam. This badge of honor applied to a team can be treated as a necessity for a team to win it all or make a deep run in the NCAA tournament.
But let’s take a look at last year’s Duke squad that ultimately was one of the final eight teams in the tournament. Quadrant 1 games are a good metric to measure teams, but let’s look at the polls to see how they fared against the top teams in the country.
The Blue Devils were 3-3 in AP Top 25 matchups. Three of those games came in the non-conference season, two in the ACC (both against North Carolina), and a win over Houston in the tournament. That same Houston team had 0 non-conference top 25 games and seven in their Big 12 games. Ask any casual college basketball fan which conference best prepared teams to be "battle tested" a year ago and 99% of them would have said the Big 12. But the results of the NCAA Tournament didn't reflect that. NC State, an ACC foe who played one ranked game against a team outside of Duke and North Carolina, ended up being the team who won the region.
Shifting to this season, how about the college basketball media’s darling, the St. John’s Red Storm? They are ranked No. 10 in the AP Poll and the similarities between the Red Storm and Duke are certainly present. First, they both share Madison Square Garden as their second home. The only difference is that the Blue Devils call MSG, “Cameron North.” Secondly, by the end of the regular season, they will have played just one more top 25 game than Duke. Yet nobody is telling Rick Pitino his team isn’t ready for the teams he will face in the postseason. Instead, he is being celebrated for being back at the top of the sport.
The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is also at the top of college basketball. Actually, most of this "battle tested" rhetoric comes from SEC fans. But here's my message to them: it can be possible to celebrate the historic season the SEC is having while still understanding that not every conference is going to be able to reach that standard this year.
This must be how Kentucky fans felt in the early to mid 2010’s when they were dominating the SEC with teams like Florida and Arkansas turning out good seasons every once in a while. I wonder how Wildcat fans felt when people would question their conference’s strength. My guess is they didn’t like that very much. Did that impact John Calipari’s success in March? From 2010 to 2015, he made four final fours and won a national title. His team’s were 68-18 in the SEC. Florida was second with a 63-23 record in the conference and only made one final 4 during that time.
It is insulting how people have tried to paint Duke’s schedule as a weak one. A road game against Arizona and neutral site games against Kentucky, Kansas and Illinois have to matter. One of the best wins of the college basketball season against Auburn has to matter. Jon Scheyer’s willingness to schedule a non-conference game against a power-five opponent in late February should be applauded.
After an underwhelming performance at the Maui Invitational this year, UConn head coach Dan Hurley told reporters he’s done playing in multiple team events (MTE’s). Those are some of the best events on the college basketball schedule! It isn’t great if the best brands are backing out of big games and challenges. Just down the hall from Hurley’s office sits Geno Auriemma’s office, head coach of the UConn Women’s basketball team. Auriemma has scheduled non-conference games against power-five opponents late in the season for years. Games like the one the Huskie women played vs South Carolina a week ago are beneficial for both the sport and for the teams to get a look at non-conference contenders as the tournament approaches.
Taking a look inside the conference, the ACC has five teams that are in the tournament or listed on the bubble in Joe Lunardi’s bracketology. It’s important to note that these teams give Duke their best shot because: one, it’s Duke, and secondly, this is their only chance to get a huge resume-building win. Against those teams, the Blue Devils are 5-1 with a +14.1 point differential in those games.
Whether you are playing a first round game against someone from the Metro-Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) or an Elite 8 game against a team from a power-five conference, you’re getting that team’s best shot. This Duke team has dealt with that all season. Saturday night being Duke’s third neutral-site game of the season, coming at the world’s most famous arena is another nod to how this team is getting ready for the big state that is March.
Does this mean Duke is undoubtedly going to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament? No. But, don’t think for a second this team hasn’t played in difficult games or been in adverse situations that simulate what the next month and change will look like.
Caleb Zuver | @zuves35