Notre Dame is doing everything it can to keep its feeble NCAA Tournament hopes alive. It took a step in the right direction Tuesday after beating Duke, 93-89. This was only the second time the Irish had won a game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, and it came after they trailed, 23-8, in the first half. The soon-to-be-retired Jack Nolan lamented on the air about not being able to travel to Durham for the game, which was for obvious reasons.
Normally, a win like this would be a resume booster for a team that’s now 8-10 overall and 5-7 in the ACC, even if its chances of playing in March Madness are slim. Just the fact that the Irish beat a historically prominent program on its own floor, even without fans, gives them a great sense of pride. But Duke has fallen on hard times. The Blue Devils now are 5-7 in conference play and have a 7-8 overall record, which puts them at a couple of marks they haven’t seen for a long time:
After losing to Notre Dame today, Duke is below .500 for the first time since November 1999. pic.twitter.com/jOqKzT1DUx
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) February 9, 2021
Duke fell 93-89 to Notre Dame tonight bringing their season record to 7-8. This is the first time that Duke has been under .500 in February/March since finishing 13-18 in 1994-95 pic.twitter.com/bOCsQODJDI
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) February 10, 2021
Now, those facts don’t tell the whole story. The 1999-2000 Blue Devils started their season with a pair of losses to a star-packed Stanford team and a UConn bunch still riding the high of beating them in the national championship game the previous spring. They quickly recovered and ended up with 29 wins. During the 1994-95 season, Mike Krzyzewski took a leave of absence to deal with a back injury, and Duke fell apart under interim coach Pete Gaudet, resulting in the worst season in program history.
This season can partly be blamed on the impact of COVID-19 as it has limited the amount of time the Blue Devils otherwise would have spent together. It’s also a very young team that Krzyzewski had to build almost from scratch with many players from last year either graduating or going to the NBA. But there’s no one reason for why this program is struggling just to finish with a winning record. Everything working against it just seemed to happen at once.
With more NBA hopefuls heading to the G-League or overseas and the likelihood of high school players being able to head straight to the draft once again, Duke may not be able to get back to respectability so easily. The aforementioned factors stretch the amateur basketball talent pool further by the day. It’s almost sure to level the playing field, so maybe this is the time for new programs to reign supreme from year to year. Plus, Krzyzewski is closer to the end of his career than the beginning, and it will be nearly impossible for the Blue Devils to find a coach of his stature and influence down the road.
It’s often said that when Duke loses, America wins. But where’s the fun in saying that if the losses are happening more often than not? Perhaps we’ve finally reached that point where the villain has to accept the ultimate defeat, never to pose a threat to the greater good again. While it may not be coming in a way people expected or possibly even wanted, all good and bad things must eventually come to an end, and we don’t always get to choose how we arrive there.