Tag: Connecticut Huskies

College Sports Wire lays out five potential landing spots for Duke transfer Jeremy Roach

The four-year Duke starter entered the transfer portal on Tuesday, meaning he could go anywhere for his final season. According to College Sports Wire’s Andy Patton, however, there are a few favorites.

Longtime Duke starter Jeremy Roach, a member of the Final Four run in 2022 and the Elite Eight run this past season, declared for the NBA draft on Tuesday.

However, he also retained eligibility and entered the transfer portal, and the consensus seems to be that he’ll exercise his last year of college basketball with another school. But where?

College Sports Wire’s Andy Patton released an article on Wednesday detailing the five most likely landing spots for the four-year Blue Devil.

Patton first cited an Adam Zagoria report that said St. John’s, Arkansas, and Kentucky were the top options for Roach. The College Sports Wire writer had St. John’s first on his list because of the departures of Nahiem Alleyne and Glenn Taylor Jr., saying head coach Rick Pitino could make waves with Roach’s commitment.

After the Razorbacks and Wildcats, listed second and third in order, Patton had Dan Hurley and the Connecticut Huskies as a fourth potential suitor. The two-time defending national champions will lose Tristen Newton, Stephon Castle, Donovan Clingan, and more this offseason.

“Roach is the perfect veteran for Hurley to bring into the mix, with his combination of floor spacing and lead guard facilitation a great first addition for the Huskies to build around,” Patton wrote.

Rather than a fifth college team, however, Patton said that the NBA could be a likely suitor for Roach. The College Sports Wire writer believes a good pre-draft process could make the pros a possibility.

“While his age and size may limit his prospects, if he performs well during workouts, he could get a promise from a team as a second-round pick or priority free agent signing,” Patton concluded.

Duke opens as favorites to win 2025 men’s basketball national title, per Fanduel odds

The Blue Devils have the best chance to cut down the nets in 12 months, according to Fanduel’s newly released odds for 2025.

According to Fanduel Sportsbook, no one has a better chance to cut down the nets in 12 months than the Blue Devils.

The Duke men’s basketball team opened as the site’s favorite to win the 2024-25 national title. Head coach Jon Scheyer’s team opened at +1100 to win it all, bolstered by five-star recruits like Cooper Flagg and Khaman Maluach.

“The incoming freshmen should mesh well with Blue Devil holdovers Sean Stewart (57.1 FG%) and Caleb Foster (7.7 PPG),” Fanduel’s Gabriel Santiago wrote in an article about the opening odds. “In all, FanDuel Sportsbook is expecting Duke to make a serious run next season.”

[gambcom-standard rankid=”3011″]

The Kansas Jayhawks have the second-lowest odds at +1200, followed by now two-time defending champion Connecticut at +1300. The Alabama Crimson Tide, North Carolina Tar Heels, and Houston Cougars are all +1500, the only other teams lower than +2000.

Team Odds
Duke Blue Devils +1100
Kansas Jayhawks +1200
UConn Huskies +1300
Alabama Crimson Tide +1500
North Carolina Tar Heels +1500
Houston Cougars +1500
Arizona Wildcats +2000
Gonzaga Bulldogs +2500
Baylor Bears +3000
Kentucky Wildcats +3000

[gambcom-standard rankid=”5″]

Get more betting analysis and predictions at Sportsbook Wire

Connecticut eliminates Duke in low-scoring Sweet 16 battle

Duke women’s basketball pulled out a 10-0 desperation run in the fourth quarter on Saturday night, but it wasn’t enough to get past UConn.

Duke’s second-round upset of Ohio State had the makings of a fairy tale beginning, but a fourth-quarter surge from the Blue Devils wasn’t enough to beat Connecticut in the Sweet 16.

The Huskies, led once again by Player of the Year finalist Paige Bueckers, took down Duke for a 53-45 victory.

On the bright side, the Blue Devils held Connecticut to one of its worst offensive halves of the year to start the game. Duke’s defense harassed UConn, and the Huskies only had 23 points after two quarters.

The down side? Connecticut still led by 10.

The first 20 minutes featured some ugly basketball (unless you love defense, in which case, it was glorious). The two teams combined for 16 points in the opening quarter. The Huskies started to pull away late in the second, however, with an and-one from Bueckers with seven minutes left in the half helping to ignite a 13-4 run that broke the game open.

The Blue Devils spent much of the third quarter at arm’s length, trailing by 20 points in the final two minutes of the frame for the largest deficit of the game. After scoring 26.5 points per game in Duke’s first two victories, junior guard Reigan Richardson was held in check. She finished with just 10 points, shooting 5/15 from the floor and 0/5 from 3-point range. It was her first game without a triple since Georgia Tech on March 7.

Despite the off night from the team star, who dealt with the expected attention from the Connecticut defense, Duke found a way to fight back into the game. The Blue Devils scored the final five points of the third, emphasized by a 3-pointer from Taina Mair, to pull within 15.

With 6:22 to play, the Huskies’ Ice Brady made a jump shot to make it a 15-point game again. UConn didn’t score again for more than five minutes.

The Blue Devils defense did all it could, and the offense desperately fought back into the game. Ashlon Jackson made two free throws. Freshman Oluchi Okananwa, the ACC Sixth Person of the Year, converted an and-one and buried a 3-pointer as part of her team-leading 15 points.

Duke could only score 10 of the 15 points it needed, however, and when Connecticut star Aaliyah Edwards broke the scoring drought with 1:07 left to play, the game was all but over.

Bueckers finished with a game-high 24 points, although Duke became the first defense to stop her from putting up a double-double in the tournament. Edwards and KK Arnold each added 12 points to the victory effort.

The Blue Devils offense, without open looks for much of the afternoon, finished with a 32.7% conversion rate from the floor and shot 21.1% from 3-point range. Richardson and Okananwa were the only two to finish with more than five points.

Duke finishes the season with a 22-12 record.

Can the Duke defense slow down Paige Bueckers?

Duke women’s basketball needs to slow down one of the best players in the sport on Saturday, but the Blue Devils might be suited to the task.

Let’s just get it out of the way: UConn’s Paige Bueckers is one of the best college basketball players of the last decade.

Bueckers was named the Player of the Year as a freshman in 2021, averaging 20.0 points. 5.7 assists, 4.9 rebounds, and 2.3 steals in her first season of collegiate basketball. She led the Huskies to the Final Four that season and the national championship game the next.

This year, after missing a full season due to injury, she’s picked up right where she left off. She’s averaging a career-high in points (21.8), rebounds (5.1), and blocks (1.4), and she’s still dishing out 3.9 assists per game.

She’s racked up two double-doubles through two tournament games, dropping 28 points on Jacksonville State and 32 points against Syracuse. She’s pulled down 10.5 rebounds and dealt 6.5 assists per game in the postseason thus far, and she had seven steals between the two games.

In postseason basketball, the sport’s best players can be absolute buzzsaws. Scheme, depth, balance, it can all be thrown out the window if your team doesn’t have anyone to stop Bueckers.

The Blue Devils might not have that problem.

Duke allowed 58.0 points per game this season, the best mark in the ACC and the seventh-best average of any Power 6 school. The Blue Devils are allowing opponents to shoot 36.9% from the floor and 32.0% from beyond the arc.

Kara Lawson’s squad has a strong track record against dominant guards, too.

Syracuse’s Dyaisha Fair, an All-ACC First Team member who averaged 22.3 points per game (the third-most in the conference) got to play the Blue Devils at home in February. She finished 7/25 from the floor, one of just six conference games in which she finished below 30% for the game, and 1/7 from behind the 3-point line. The Orange only scored 45 points.

Florida State’s Ta’Niya Latson, another 20-point-per-game scorer and another All-ACC First Team guard, scored 15 points on 17 shots against the Blue Devils back in January. Duke won that game by 42 points on the Seminoles’ home court.

Even in Duke’s second-round upset of Ohio State, the Buckeyes’ star guard Jacy Sheldon couldn’t get off the ground. Sheldon averaged 18 points per game entering the contest, the third-best mark in the Big Ten, but she could only manage 13 points against the Blue Devils. Sheldon made five of her 13 attempts and just one of her four 3-pointers, and Ohio State went 1/11 as a team from distance.

A player of Bueckers’ caliber presents her own challenges. The only player Duke has seen on her tier this season is Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo, a freshman who leads the conference in both points (22.9) and steals (4.6) while finishing third in assists (5.6). Hidalgo helped the Fighting Irish past Duke with a 23-point game in Cameron last month, but Duke lost that game by eight after losing the third quarter by 12.

The path for a No. 7 seed to make the Elite Eight would always be tough, Bueckers or not. However, if any 7-seed might have a path to slowing down the Huskies dynamic star, it would be the Blue Devils.

Where to watch Duke’s Sweet 16 game against Connecticut

Check out where you can watch the Blue Devils fight Paige Bueckers and Connecticut for a spot in the Sweet 16.

The Blue Devils already played spoiler once in the NCAA Women’s Tournament, but the next round of March Madness brings with it another giant to slay.

Duke will play Connecticut on Saturday in the Sweet 16 as Reigan Richardson and the team try to upset Paige Bueckers and the Huskies.

Richardson has averaged 26.5 points and 7.0 rebounds per game through two rounds, the first Blue Devil since Alana Beard to reach 25 points in consecutive tournament games.

Bueckers, in her first tournament action in two years, has scored 30 points per game with two double-doubles thus far.

Day: Saturday, March 30

Time: 8:00 p.m. ET

Channel: ESPN

The winner of Saturday’s game will play either Baylor or USC for a ticket to the Final Four.

Duke will play Connecticut in Sweet 16 of Women’s March Madness

The Blue Devils got through Ohio State in the second round, but now, Duke gets the legendary Connecticut Huskies and star Paige Bueckers.

On the heels of a second-round upset over Ohio State, the Blue Devils have to play the most accomplished women’s basketball program in the country.

Duke will face the Connecticut Huskies in the Sweet 16 on Saturday, March 30.

The Huskies, led by star Paige Bueckers, defeated Syracuse in the second round, a 72-64 victory on Monday evening. Bueckers, the consensus 2021 player of the year as a freshman, scored 32 points on 14/25 shooting.

She added 10 rebounds for a double-double, her second in two tournament games, as well as six assists, four steals, and a block. Bueckers is averaging more than 21 points per game this season.

The two schools haven’t faced off since November 2022 when the Huskies defeated Duke 78-50 on a neutral court in Oregon. Bueckers did not play as she suffered an injury earlier in the season.

Duke has played UConn 13 times in school history, winning just twice. The Blue Devils will look to reverse that trend behind the stellar play of junior Reigan Richardson, who has averaged 26.5 points and 7.0 rebounds per game through the tournament thus far.

EvanMiya’s ‘Kill Shot’: How many 10-0 runs does Duke rattle off?

EvanMiya’s “kill shot” metric shows that teams with a 10-0 run have an overwhelming chance to win a game. How often does Duke pull one off?

Basketball analytics nerds are probably reveling in how mainstream sports data has become, and few examples are more prevalent than EvanMiya.

Founded by Evan Miyakawa, the site has become one of the most well-known sources for college basketball data. The site’s most popular measurement over the past few weeks is known as the “kill shot,” a measurement of how often teams rattle off a 10-0 run.

According to an explanation written by Miyakawa, teams that go on a 10-0 run during a game win 71% of the time. If a team can pull off two such runs in a single game, that win percentage jumps up to 86% of the time.

If you don’t end things at the halftime break, the Blue Devils were a victim of a kill shot against the Wolfpack on Thursday. After Duke led 32-30 with 1:30 to play before halftime, NC State scored the next 11 points over the next four minutes.

The end result? A 74-69 win for the Wolfpack, the difference decided in those handful of minutes.

Strangely enough, for a team as offensive as Duke, they seem better at preventing kill shots than enforcing them. A graph can be found on Miyakawa’s blog post, but the Blue Devils are one of the better teams in the nation at not allowing 10-0 runs, allowing less than 0.3 kill shots per game (adjusted for strength of schedule).

Duke doesn’t quite break off as many kill shots as some other top teams, averaging around 0.6 adjusted kill shots per game. Some national contenders like Connecticut, Tennessee, or Alabama are close to 0.7, and Houston is close to 0.75.

Either way, the Blue Devils are closer to the best corner of the graph than anywhere else.

Duke remains steady at No. 9 in latest AP Poll

After two relatively stress free wins last week, Duke remains at No. 9 in latest AP Poll.

After winning both of their games last week in an attempt to bounce back from the loss to their Tobacco Road rivals, Jon Scheyer’s Duke Blue Devils remained at No. 9 in the latest AP Poll released Monday afternoon.

Duke dispatched Notre Dame at home 71-53 to complete a season sweep of the Fighting Irish. They followed up with an 80-65 home win over a Boston College team led by All-ACC big man Quinten Post.

As the calendar inches closer and closer to March, Duke is trying to round itself into form and begin playing their best basketball at the right time.

At the top of the AP Poll, Connecticut and Purdue serve as the two best teams in the nation, respectively. UNC‘s home loss to Clemson for just the second time ever cost them their spot at No. 3. That now goes to the Houston Cougars, who moved up since Kansas lost against their in-state rivals, the Kansas State Wildcats on the road.

Marquette and Arizona are your fourth- and fifth-ranked teams as both saw themselves rise three spots from last week’s poll.

Kansas is now sixth, while Hubert Davis’ team is now seventh. All-American candidate Dalton Knecht and the Tennessee Volunteers are now eight after Texas A&M drilled them on Saturday evening.

T. J. Otzelberger and the Iowa State Cyclones round out the top 10, giving the Big 12 three schools in the top 10.

Tony Bennett and the Virginia Cavaliers join the Blue Devils and Tarheels as the only ACC teams represented in the top 25.

Duke, Virginia, and UNC are in a tense battle for ACC supremacy, with the Tar Heels holding onto a one-game lead over UVA and a 1.5-game lead over Duke. UVA and UNC are set to play each other toward the end of February, while Duke is set to host both Virginia and UNC in March as their final two home games to close out this ACC regular season.

Defending champions back atop USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll after tumultuous week

The defending national champions are back atop the college basketball world after losses from each of the other four top-5 teams last week.

After a quiet start to the year, college basketball started to look like March this past week.

Purdue, who entered the week atop the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll, dropped a road game to Nebraska on Tuesday that wasn’t particularly close, with the Cornhuskers winning by 16 points. That same night, Houston, who was No. 3 in the coaches’ rankings, fell by four points to Iowa State.

Then-No. 2 Kansas wasn’t any safer, as the Jayhawks lost to Central Florida by five points the following night. That same night, then-No. 5 Tennessee lost by the same five-point margin on the road to Mississippi State.

After Purdue, Kansas, Houston, and Tennessee combined for five losses before January 8, they lost four times in a 24-hour span.

The carnage wasn’t even over for Houston, who lost a second straight game to TCU by a single point on Saturday. After 14 consecutive wins to begin the year, the Cougars have a losing record in conference play.

All the carnage left a familiar face at the top of the rankings: last year’s national champions, the Connecticut Huskies. UConn played twice last week, dispatching Xavier by five points and defeating Georgetown by 13, to extend its winning streak to five games and supplant itself back atop the nation.

A look at the full Coaches Poll powered by USA TODAY Sports:

Rank Team Record Points Change
1 UConn 15-2 785 +3
2 Purdue 15-2 762 -1
3 North Carolina 13-3 717 +4
4 Kansas 14-2 713 -1
5 Houston 14-2 619 -3
6 Duke 13-3 590 +5
7 Tennessee 12-4 574 -2
8 Wisconsin 13-3 533 +7
9 Baylor 14-2 523 +5
10 Kentucky 12-3 514 -4
11 Auburn 14-2 509 +5
12 Memphis 15-2 489 +1
13 Arizona 12-4 424 -5
14 Illinois 12-4 319 -4
15 Creighton 13-4 261 +5
16 Oklahoma 13-3 239 -7
17 Utah State 16-1 238 +6
18 Marquette 11-5 214 -6
19 BYU 13-3 174 -2
20 Iowa State 13-3 152 +9
21 Ole Miss 15-1 151 +2
22 TCU 13-3 150 +12
23 Dayton 13-2 130 +6
24 San Diego State 14-3 102 -5
25 Texas Tech 14-2 92 +11

Schools Dropped Out

Colorado State (18th), Gonzaga (21st), Clemson (22nd), FAU (25th)

Others Receiving Votes

Colorado State (81), FAU (67), Alabama (60), Seton Hall (40), Clemson (39), Grand Canyon (34), Texas (20), Nevada (14), Gonzaga (11), Oregon (10), N.C. State (9), Villanova (9), James Madison (8), Princeton (7), St. John’s (6), Florida State (4), Wake Forest (2), Nebraska (2), Florida (2), New Mexico (1), Indiana State (1)

 

Connecticut’s Azzi Fudd will miss the rest of the 2023-24 season

The Huskies guard will undergo season-ending surgery to repair a torn ACL and a medial meniscal tear in her right knee.

Connecticut guard Azzi Fudd will miss the rest of the 2023-24 season after she suffered an ACL tear and a medial meniscal tear in her right knee, the school announced on Wednesday.

The junior suffered the injury in a practice session on November 14. She will undergo season-ending surgery to repair the damage.

“We’re all just so upset for Azzi,” head coach Geno Auriemma said in a statement. “She worked so hard to be healthy for this season, and it’s unfortunate when you put in a lot of hard work and suffer a setback like this.”

This is Fudd’s third major injury in three years with the Huskies. She only played 25 games as a freshman after dealing with a foot injury, and she played 15 games as a sophomore after knee injuries again sidelined her.

“Azzi loves the game and works tirelessly,” Auriemma said. “I’m confident she’ll rehab with the same work ethic and come back better than ever.”