Duke basketball currently sits at 9-2 and is ranked 5th in the Associated Press Poll. The Blue Devils have played a gauntlet of a non-conference schedule with matchups against #2 Auburn, #4 Kentucky, and #8 Kansas.
The non-con schedule is now drawing to a close as the Blue Devils will begin their regular slate of ACC games on Saturday at Georgia Tech (12:00pm ET, ACC Network). Duke has one more non-conference game against Illinois on February 22nd, but besides that it's ACC contests from here on out.
The ACC looks incredibly weak. In the ACC/SEC challenge, the SEC finished 14-2 with 11 of those wins coming by double digits and 5 wins by 20 or more points.
Two ACC teams have been ranked over the past two weeks in Duke and Clemson. Duke was #4 last week and dropped to #5 this week. Clemson came in at #16 last week, but fell to #25 in this week's poll after losing to then unranked now #21 Memphis. The Tigers just lost to unranked South Carolina last night, most likely dropping them out of the poll and leaving Duke as the only ranked representative of the ACC.
Per BetMGM, Duke is -200 to win the ACC regular season title. The next best odds go to Clemson at +600.
With the ACC arguably being the weakest of the power conferences, how likely is it Duke finishes the season undefeated in conference play?
KenPom actually projects Duke to finish the regular season undefeated as the Blue Devils are favored in every single one of their games moving forward. The lowest projected win percentage for any of Duke's remaining games per KenPom is when Duke travels to Clemson, where the algorithm gives Duke a 63% chance to win, which is still a pretty favorable margin.
Along with that, Duke is given a 90% or above probability to win in 11 of their 19 conference games, basically saying the Blue Devils will be in a "buy game" scenario over half of the time.
As the KenPom analytics currently stand, the only remaining top-25 KenPom opponent on Duke's schedule is Illinois. Within the ACC, Duke will play a top-50 KenPom opponent just 5 times and a top-100 KenPom opponent just 12 times.
To break down the data, this basically means the Blue Devils just have a ridiculously easy schedule for the remainder of the season, at least as the analytics currently stand.
That's not the fault of Jon Scheyer's scheduling, it's just how mediocre the ACC is this year.
There are pros and cons to Duke's remaining schedule. On one hand, it should give the program an opportunity to keep stacking wins. On the other hand, there will be little to no big resume-boosting opportunities for the rest of the season at all. And on top of that, one loss could be a big hit to the resume as there's a good chance it's to a sub-50 or sub-75 KenPom team.
Even with such a weak ACC, it seems really unlikely Duke will go 19-0. Despite how much better the Blue Devils are than everyone else, it's still a freshmen-oriented squad that will have their slip-up moments.
Also, even though North Carolina is 6-5 and doesn't look like anything above a 5 or 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament, that rivalry always puts Blue Devils fans on edge as those games never disappoint.