Where are the Duke Blue Devils in the latest USA TODAY Sports bowl projections?
Duke ended the 2024 college football regular season with a last-second 23-17 victory over the Wake Forest Demon Deacons.
The Blue Devils finished up with a 9-3 record in the end, their second nine-win season in three years, to finish in a tie for fourth in the ACC (5-3 conference record). It’s clear Duke will draw a worthy bowl destination, but the question remains where that ends up being.
In Erick Smith’s latest bowl projections for USA TODAY Sports published on Monday, the Blue Devils drew the Minnesota Golden Gophers in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. The game, an ironic landing spot for Duke, will take place in Charlotte, North Carolina, on the night of January 3rd.
Minnesota finished the season with seven wins, tied for seventh in the Big Ten with a 5-4 conference record. Despite the mediocre record, the Golden Gophers took some top teams down to the wire. They lost to the Penn State Nittany Lions, a certain College Football Playoff team, by one point just weeks after a 27-24 loss to the Michigan Wolverines.
Thanks to Miami’s 42-38 loss to Syracuse on Saturday, Smith thinks the SMU Mustangs will be the only ACC representative in the 12-team playoff bracket.
The Duke Blue Devils surpassed expectations on the football field in 2024, and one offensive star earned a conference award for his efforts.
Duke football fans would have been forgiven for having tempered expectations for fifth-year wideout [autotag]Eli Pancol[/autotag] in 2024.
After Pancol stacked 565 yards and five touchdowns in his first three collegiate seasons, he missed the last four regular-season games in 2022 and the entire 2023 campaign with two separate ankle injuries.
In his final season with the program, however, Pancol paced the Blue Devils with 55 receptions and nine receiving touchdowns. He surpassed 100 yards twice this year, including a 188-yard performance against Virginia Tech that featured three trips to the end zone in Week 13.
He earned ACC Receiver of the Week honors for that game against the Hokies, and he took home another conference accolade on Monday when the ACC named him the recipient of the 2024 Brian Piccolo Award.
The award, given to the conference’s most courageous player, has been given out each year since 1970, but Pancol is the first Blue Devil honored since it was given to defensive lineman Scott Youmans in 1993.
That monster night against Virginia Tech came in Pancol’s final game at Wallace Wade Stadium, and he offered a small glimpse into his appreciation for this season on the ACC Network show “ACC Huddle” after the win.
“Seriously, it felt like a dream come true,” Pancol said. “Someone asked me out there, ‘What’d that feel like?’, it felt like a dream come true. I prayed for this.”
Through Week 14 of the college football season, Pancol is one of four ACC receivers with at least 50 receptions, 700 yards, and nine touchdowns. Only 25 wideouts across the entire country have matched that trifecta thus far.
Despite two losses already on their resume this season, the Duke Blue Devils stuck within the top 10 in Andy Katz’s weekly power rankings.
The Duke men’s basketball team and its fans probably hoped for a perfect start to the 2024-25 season, but two losses against the Blue Devils’ early schedule isn’t disqualifying by any means. College basketball analyst Andy Katz certainly feels that way as he kept Duke eighth in his updated Power 37 rankings on Monday.
Duke’s two neutral-site losses came by five points to the Kentucky Wildcats and by three points to the Kansas Jayhawks, two powerhouse programs that remain undefeated so far this season. The Blue Devils sat tied with Kentucky and one point behind Kansas with 20 seconds left on the clock, only falling thanks to some late turnovers from their freshman starters.
“The Blue Devils are close to finishing off elite teams and will get another test this week,” Katz wrote.
Katz put the Jayhawks second and the Wildcats fifth in his rankings.
The upcoming chance Katz referred to won’t be any easier, however. The Auburn Tigers come to Durham for a Wednesday night game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, and they actually jumped Kansas for Katz’s top overall spot after the Maui Invitational last week. Through their first seven games, the Tigers have stacked wins against the Houston Cougars, Iowa State Cyclones, North Carolina Tar Heels, and Memphis Tigers.
Duke star Reigan Richardson earned ACC Co-Player of the Week honors on Monday after her 35-point game against Oklahoma.
Duke women’s basketball star [autotag]Reigan Richardson[/autotag] put forth one of the best performances in the program’s recent history last Wednesday, dropping 35 points against the then-No. 8 Oklahoma Sooners team in the Ball Dawgs Classic title game, and she picked up an ACC accolade for the effort.
The conference named her ACC Co-Player of the Week on Monday, splitting the honor between Richardson and Florida State Seminoles guard Ta’Niya Latson.
Richardson, the team’s leading scorer last season, scored 16 points against then-No. 9 Kansas State in the first round of that same tournament before tacking on 19 more against Columbia on Sunday. She averaged 23.3 points, 4.0 rebounds, and 3.8 assists between the three games while making 53.8% of her attempts and 50% of her 3-point looks.
The former Georgia Bulldog is no stranger to great performances on big stages for the Blue Devils. She scored 26.5 points per game between Duke’s first two NCAA Tournament bouts last season, including a 28-point effort in the team’s second-round upset of the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Through nine games to start her senior season, the North Carolina native has put up 15.0 points, 3.1 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per game while helping the Blue Devils to an 8-1 record. She’s connected on 42.9% of her triples, a marked improvement on her 30.2% clip from distance a season ago.
Duke linebacker Cameron Bergeron racked up an ACC award after his strong showing against Wake Forest on Saturday.
Duke linebacker Cameron Bergeron has played a key role in the Blue Devils’ defensive success in 2024, and the Georgia native earned some recognition for his work on Monday.
Bergeron was named the ACC Linebacker of the Week after he finished Saturday’s game against Wake Forest with nine tackles, a sack, and a forced fumble. The Blue Devils fell behind 17-3 early in the third quarter, but Bergeron and his teammates held the Demon Deacons scoreless over the final quarter-and-a-half to let the offense claw back into the game.
After only recording 17 total tackles over the previous three seasons, Bergeron racked up 75 during the 2024 regular season with 8.5 tackles for loss and 3.5 sacks. He forced two fumbles and even intercepted a pass against SMU in Week 9.
Saturday was Bergeron’s fifth game of the season with at least eight total tackles, including a season-high 10 against Virginia Tech in Week 13, and recorded multiple tackles for loss in three of the team’s first four games this year.
Before Wednesday’s clash with Auburn, the Duke Blue Devils jumped back into the top 10 in the latest AP Poll on Monday.
The Associated Press released its updated AP Top 25 men’s college basketball poll on Monday, and the Duke Blue Devils jumped up two spots to No. 9 as the highest-ranked two-loss team.
Despite a 75-72 loss to the Kansas Jayhawks last Tuesday, Duke’s 941 votes in this week’s poll helped them leapfrog the Alabama Crimson Tide.
The Jayhawks held onto the No. 1 overall spot by a thread, but the Blue Devils’ upcoming opponent made up quite a bit of ground. The Auburn Tigers picked up 26 first-place votes after they defeated the Iowa State Cyclones, North Carolina Tar Heels, and Memphis Tigers in three consecutive games to win the Maui Invitational.
Duke hosts Auburn at Cameron Indoor Stadium this coming Wednesday, giving the Blue Devils a chance at their second top-25 win of the season.
Two other SEC schools, the Tennessee Volunteers and Kentucky Wildcats, followed suit in third and fourth. The Connecticut Huskies, two-time defending national champions, tumbled all the way down to 25th after three straight losses in Maui, and the 4-3 Tar Heels slipped down to 20th.
The voters in the USA TODAY Sports men’s basketball coaches poll didn’t punish the Duke Blue Devils for their 75-72 loss to No. 1 Kansas.
The Duke men’s basketball team lost its second game of the season last Tuesday, a 75-72 neutral-site loss to No. 1 Kansas, but coaches around the country didn’t seem particularly concerned with the performance.
The Jayhawks, still undefeated after they held off [autotag]Cooper Flagg[/autotag] and his teammates down the stretch, maintained their hold atop the board with 19 first-place votes. However, after wins over the Iowa State Cyclones and North Carolina Tar Heels in Maui, the Auburn Tigers earned 12 first-place votes to close ground on Kansas.
Auburn, of course, comes to Cameron Indoor Stadium on Wednesday for Duke’s fourth top-25 opponent in six games. The Blue Devils are 1-2 in ranked battles so far this season, but they’re 4-0 at home and haven’t won a game in Durham by fewer than 22 points.
The Tennessee Volunteers, Marquette Golden Eagles, and Iowa State Cyclones followed Auburn within the top five. The Tar Heels, with two losses in Maui to drop down to 4-3 for the year, nearly dropped from the rankings at No. 22.
Check out the complete USA TODAY Sports men’s basketball coaches poll below.
The Blue Devils rose five spots to No. 8 in Monday’s rankings, setting up a top-10 showdown with No. 3 South Carolina in Columbia this Thursday. With the Notre Dame Fighting Irish tumbling down to No. 10 with a pair of losses, head coach Kara Lawson and her team can now call themselves the highest-ranked ACC program.
Duke has benefitted from some monster games during its recent winning streak, including a 30-point performance from Ashlon Jackson against Kansas State and a 35-point day from Reigan Richardson against Oklahoma.
Five-star freshman forward Toby Fournier is also averaging 11.9 points per game after her 25-point game against Belmont, and the 6-foot-2 debutant has notched at least 10 points in six of her nine games.
Check out where the Duke Blue Devils landed on the USA TODAY Sports college football re-rank after their 9-3 regular season.
The Duke Blue Devils couldn’t quite break into the top 25 in the US LBM Coaches Poll after their ninth regular-season win in Week 14, but USA TODAY Sports writer Paul Myerberg thinks head coach [autotag]Manny Diaz[/autotag] is leading a top-25 team.
The Blue Devils don’t have a top-25 win on their resume, but if fans include their last-minute field goal to force overtime against Northwestern, Diaz and his team have come from behind in the fourth quarter four times in 2024. Quarterback [autotag]Maalik Murphy[/autotag] completed 16 of his 20 passes in the second half, running for a touchdown before launching a 39-yard scoring throw to Jordan Moore on the final play.
With Syracuse’s upset over Miami, the ACC title game race got thrown into chaos at the buzzer. After a 9-0 start to the season, the Hurricanes won’t even make the trip to Charlotte after a pair of late losses, instead crossing their fingers for an at-large College Football Playoff berth.
Myerberg slotted Miami at No. 16 in his updated rankings, a full ten spots behind the SMU Mustangs (No. 6) at the top of the conference. The Clemson Tigers (No. 17) will head to the title game despite three regular-season losses, but no other ACC team finished above Duke on Myerberg’s list.
Thanks to a ranked win over the Arizona Wildcats in its only true road game, Duke started the season fourth in the net rankings behind only the Tennessee Volunteers, Auburn Tigers, and Gonzaga Bulldogs.
The Blue Devils have won all four of their home games by at least 22 points, holding Wofford and Seattle to 83 combined points in the last two contests at Cameron Indoor Stadium. However, Auburn comes to town on Wednesday after a Maui Invitational title that featured wins over the Iowa State Cyclones, North Carolina Tar Heels, and Memphis Tigers.
A win over Auburn would push Duke closer to the top of the net rankings and could very well provide a head-to-head tiebreaker for a No. 1 seed in the eventual NCAA Tournament bracket. Superstar freshman [autotag]Cooper Flagg[/autotag], who scored 50 points against Kansas and Kentucky, will likely need his third 20-point performance of the season.
The Pittsburgh Panthers, off to a 7-1 start, surprisingly came in fifth in the net rankings as the second-best ACC team. The Tar Heels, after three losses in seven games to start the year, failed to crack the top 25 at 26th.
