Duke basketball is now 12-2 overall and 4-0 in the ACC after a win at SMU on Saturday by a score of 89-62. The Blue Devils didn't move in the recent Associated Press Poll released today, still the #4 ranked team in the country.
Joe Lunardi's recent Bracketology predictions have Duke as a #1 seed along with Auburn, Tennessee, and Iowa State, the current top-4 in the AP Poll which has been the same for the third straight week now.
Duke absolutely deserves to be a 1-seed. It is 4-2 in Quadrant 1 games and has yet to suffer a loss outside of Quadrant 1. It's also rated as the #2 team at KenPom with the 9th-highest offensive efficiency rating and the 3rd-highest defensive efficiency rating.
The Blue Devils are the only team other than Iowa State to be ranked in the top 10 in offensive and defensive efficiency at KenPom.
As the Blue Devils have continuously been one of the most dominant teams in college basketball all season, its deserving they sit on the 1-seed line.
But the other three 1-seeds hail from the SEC or Big 12, possibly the two best conferences in the sport. The SEC is undoubtedly the best, but an argument can be made for the Big 10 or Big 12 at the number two spot.
What teams in these other strong power conferences will have is lots of Quadrant 1 opportunities where even losses won't hurt that bad.
Duke doesn't have that luxury in a weak ACC where the next team up in the ACC in Lunardi's predictions is Pittsburgh as a 6-seed.
The other ACC squads projected to be in the tournament as of now are Clemson as a 7-seed and SMU along with North Carolina projected as two of the last four teams in.
The SEC is projected to send 12 schools to the dance, the Big 10 is projected to send 11, and the Big 12 is at 8.
With just how much better these power conferences are than the ACC, Duke will have much less leeway to drop games and remain on the 1-seed line.
Duke only has 4 remaining Quad 1 games on its schedule and 10 of the team's remaining 17 games on the schedule are Quadrant 3 or 4 games.
Even a single loss in the bottom two Quadrants are enough to bump a team down for good off of the 1-seed line who was there before and maybe even the 2-seed line if there's multiple.
Where this poses an issue for Duke is it's so difficult to go undefeated in conference play, regardless of how weak the rest of the conference is. And one rough loss on the road to a "bottom of the barrel" team in the ACC could bump Duke off the 1-seed line and make it really difficult to get back up there.
Now, Duke has had no problem running through the ACC so far, winning its four games by an average of 21.8 points. But one off night and the Blue Devils could be knocked off the tightrope they're walking on the 1-seed line right now.
It seems crazy to say, but it's feasible the Blue Devils will have to go no worse than 18-2 in conference play and win the ACC Tournament to earn a 1-seed in the big dance.
Duke has shown this is extremely possible with how it's handled the conference so far, but the program will be walking a nonstop tightrope on its way to a 1-seed bid in the NCAA Tournament for the rest of the regular season.