Duke Is Peaking at the Perfect Time — And the Numbers Back It Up
The Blue Devils aren’t just the best team in the country — they’re headed to March Madness as one of the hottest teams in recent history.
Note: This story was a collaboration with Jason Lisk and David Hess of PoolGenius. Subscribe to their free newsletter for data-driven college basketball insights. And for a mathematical edge in your March Madness pools — PoolGenius subscribers win 3x more often than expected — check out their NCAA Bracket Picks for 2025.
It’s been a rough season for all the Duke-haters out there. Led by freshman phenom Cooper Flagg — plus fellow rookies Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach, and juniors Sion James and Tyrese Proctor — the Blue Devils have gradually gained steam to become the best team in the country this year, pretty much wherever you look. They rank No. 1 in the power ratings from not only TeamRankings, but also KenPom, Bart Torvik and ESPN’s Basketball Power Index. The various ratings can’t seem to agree about who is No. 2 behind Duke — is it Houston, or Auburn? — but the Blue Devils’ dominance at the top has been undeniable.
In fact, as Duke embarks on its ACC tournament run today against Georgia Tech1 at noon ET, there’s a case to be made that these Blue Devils are the best men’s college hoops team heading into the NCAA tournament in recent memory. Going back to 2012-13, when TeamRankings’ predictive ratings began in their current form, no other team had a better mark before March Madness than Duke in 2024-25 — and it’s not even particularly close:
What’s especially interesting about this Duke season is that they were not the most dominant team on that historical list earlier this year. In fact, they were not even the most dominant team of 2024-25. As recently as Feb. 22, Auburn was the No. 1 team in the predictive ratings — if only fractionally ahead of Duke — where they had been for much of the season to that point. If anything, it was looking like the big-picture story of the season would be both the Tigers and Blue Devils standing out as leading an especially top-heavy season in men’s college basketball this year.
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But then, starting shortly after their loss to Clemson in early February, Duke went on one of the hottest streaks we’ve seen from any team in the past decade-plus. Here are the most dominant seven-game stretches in TeamRankings’ data according average Game Score (i.e., opponent- and location-adjusted margin of victory) since the 2012-13 season:
The previous leader in this category had been UConn’s 2024 NCAA tournament squad, which I referred to at the time as the most dominant men’s champ in modern history. Recently, Duke has been a cut above that, granting that it didn’t come in the crucible of the tourney like the Huskies’ run did.
Appearing on this ranking appears to be a great omen for Duke’s chances later this month. Of the 17 pre-2025, non-20202 teams listed above whose hot streaks took place during the lead-up to March Madness, three won the championship, two others made the title game, seven more made the Regional Final (with four of seven losing to an eventual finalist), and all won at least a game in the tournament. The No. 1 seeds in the group — a group Duke has a 79 percent chance to join, according to TeamRankings’ projections — won an average of 3.7 games in the tournament, which sets expectations roughly at the Final Four on average.
Of course, March is where Flagg and the Blue Devils will truly be judged, and Duke has found plenty of ways to fall short in the NCAA tournament since they last won the championship in 2014-15. But if the past is any guide, this kind of late-season dominance is usually a sign of great things to come in March — and Duke’s hot streak is on another level even from what we’ve seen from other great teams of the past few decades.
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Filed under: College Basketball
My alma mater, but I will try to be fair here. Also, I promise this isn’t a jinx-story.
As the NCAA tourney was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
I was in Chapel Hill on Saturday—they're good, wow!