Duke basketball has no shot to win make-believe title

An all-decade Duke basketball starting five has advanced to the third round of a Twitter tournament, but a couple of factors should prevent a title.

On Aug. 5, one tweet a time, NCAA March Madness began asking fans to decide the winners of imagined matchups between what analyst Andy Katz believes are the all-decade starting fives from the 64 most successful programs this decade (2009-10 thru last season). Of course, the all-decade Duke basketball starters were among those with an invite to the “Big Dance.”

Duke is the South Region’s No. 1 seed and on the same side of the bracket as the West Region’s top-seeded UConn. Villanova and Kentucky headline the East and Midwest, respectively.

One issue facing the Blue Devils is that not all the correct Blue Devils are on the floor.

Ball Durham recently named an entire all-decade Duke team, which did share three starters in common with those Katz selected: Grayson Allen, Kyle Singler, and Zion Williamson. However, this site’s other two chosen starters, Kyrie Irving and Marvin Bagley III, would have made the Blue Devils significantly more athletic, talented, and appealing to the voters than the picks from Katz: Nolan Smith and Jahlil Okafor.

Speaking of the voters, the widespread desire to see Blue Devils fail — in real life and beyond — presents the ultimate roadblock between Duke and an all-decade national championship.

Example of the hate: In the first round against 16-seed Murray State, 38 percent of fans went with the Racers. With all due respect to Ja Morant, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

Granted, Villanova also had an opening-round win a little too close for comfort. But nobody can blame the 36 percent of voters who just had to give a click for Villanova’s opponent, the greatest Cinderella program of all, UMBC.

Back to the Blue Devils, though. In the Round of 32, Duke edged No. 8 Xavier, again with exactly 62 percent of the nearly 20,000 votes.

Sure, against Xavier, the margin does not look as absurd as against Murray State. That being said, as a point of reference, No. 2 North Carolina — Coby White, Harrison Barnes, Marcus Paige, Luke Maye, and Tyler Zeller — has advanced to the Sweet 16 with 84 percent of the vote against No. 15 Oklahoma State and then 77 percent of the vote against No. 10 Maryland.

https://twitter.com/marchmadness/status/1163945052873216001?s=20

At the time of this article’s publishing, voting is underway in the East and Midwest to begin filling out the Elite Eight (the tweets for the matchups come two per day until fans finally decide the “Team of the Decade” on Sept. 6).

At the moment, UNC is in a 50-50 battle with No. 3 Wisconsin. For those Duke fans who haven’t already, please go ahead and fulfill your duty:

Another game still in progress includes the all-decade starting five that will almost certainly be the overall winner: Kentucky. Due in part to Big Blue Nation padding the votes, the Wildcats have waltzed thus far and currently hold 82 percent of the votes against No. 5 Oklahoma. Unlike Duke, the choices Katz made for Kentucky’s group were ideal for this type of competition. Take a look:

The Duke basketball starting five’s next matchup is against a squad with two upsets in tow, No. 13 Marquette, meaning the Blue Devils may be making plans to leave the dance shortly after voting for this game begins on Friday.

Stay tuned to Ball Durham for more updates, analyses, opinions, and predictions concerning all things Duke basketball.