Duke basketball: Put no stock in ACC media predictions

One could say that being a preseason selection from ACC media days this decade has actually been a curse — especially for the Duke basketball program.

On Thursday, Duke basketball fans will find out how the current Blue Devils — with sophomore point guard Tre Jones as their leader — stack up against the rest of the ACC in the eyes of “experts.”

Those fans who value past success should look at the past failures regarding predictions from the conference’s media days and realize they’d be better off placing their chips on any team or player other than the ones the media sees finishing on top. After all, the last time the media correctly pegged both the champion of the regular season and the ACC Player of the Year was prior to the 2007-08 season (UNC, Tyler Hansbrough).

In fact, other than the 2015-16 season when UVA’s Malcolm Brogdon was the co-preseason pick alongside UNC’s Marcus Paige and ended up winning the award, the media has not correctly identified the eventual best player ever since that Hansbrough pick 12 years ago.

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In other words, the collective media members holding votes were wrong with 11 preseason predictions for ACC Player of the Year across the past 11 years: UNC’s Luke Maye, Notre Dame’s Bonzie Colson, Duke’s Grayson Allen, Paige (twice), Syracuse’s C.J. Fair, N.C. State’s C.J. Leslie, UNC’s Harrison Barnes, Duke’s Kyle Singler (twice), and Hansbrough (2008-09 season).

Also, only twice this decade has the preseason favorite to finish with the best conference record actually wound up in the top spot (UNC on both occasions, 2011-12 and 2015-16).

Granted, most of the misses are directly related to the fact that Duke, a six-time preseason favorite this decade, has fallen short of the No. 1 record every season since the 2009-10 season when it finished in a tie with Maryland (the last time the Blue Devils finished No. 1 alone was their 2005-06 campaign).

Now, in fairness, the media has an impressive recent record when it comes to predicting the ACC Rookie of the Year: seven of the past nine. Six of those nine were Duke basketball players (Zion Williamson, who wound up taking home honors as both the best freshman and overall player last season after teammate R.J. Barrett landed ahead of him on such preseason lists, was the only freshman Blue Devil from that span who was not the media’s preseason pick).

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Rookie picks aside, though, the point is that while the preseason conference predictions will be fun to look at this week — particularly this season with no clear-cut favorites for the top team or player — recent history says one would be wise to bet against them.

Stay tuned to Ball Durham for more updates, analyses, opinions, and predictions regarding the 2019-20 Duke basketball season.