After their 84-78 victory over the No. 2 Auburn Tigers at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Wednesday night, the Duke Blue Devils quietly have one of the nation’s better resumes to start the 2024-25 men’s basketball season.
Through their first eight games, the Blue Devils have a 6-2 record with a top-five win at home, a quad-one road win over the Arizona Wildcats, and two top-10 losses (by a combined eight points) to the Kansas Jayhawks and Kentucky Wildcats.
There’s a lot of basketball left to play between Thursday and the NCAA Tournament, but a dominant run through the ACC could position Duke for one of the four No. 1 seeds, and Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl thinks the Blue Devils are set up to do just that.
“This could be a dominant team,” Pearl told Field of 68’s Jeff Goodman on a live stream after the game. “I think this team is going to dominate the ACC.”
Goodman’s stream froze before Pearl could elaborate further on his take, but the advanced metrics certainly agree with him.
After the North Carolina Tar Heels lost their third straight game on Wednesday, ESPN’s Basketball Power Index gives the Blue Devils an 88.8% chance to win the conference with a projected win total of 26.1 games. KenPom credits the Blue Devils as the third-best team in the country with a projected conference record of 17-3.
Duke’s road to ACC dominance begins with a Sunday road trip against the Louisville Cardinals.