Fans explode over the brutality of Duke's path to the NCAA Championship

The Duke Blue Devils stormed their way through the regular season, marched their way through the ACC Tournament, and cemented themselves as the No. 1 team in the country ahead of the NCAA Tournament.

Despite all of those factors, the No. 1 Blue Devils have some of the toughest opponents imaginable in their region of the bracket, including the UConn Huskies, the Michigan State Spartans, and the Kansas Jayhawks, just to name a few.

The East Region, which is where Duke earned its No. 1 seed, has the highest composite rankings among its top four teams. In other words, the four best teams in the East Region are collectively better than the four best teams in the West, South, or Midwest Regions.

To put it lightly, when the bracket was revealed, Duke fans were more than happy to share their downright outrage at the difficulty of Duke's possible path back to the Final Four.

Duke finished the regular season with a 29-2 overall record. Then, the Blue Devils beat the Florida State Seminoles, the Clemson Tigers, and the No. 10 Virginia Cavaliers to win the ACC Tournament and improve to 32-2 overall.

Their reward for the incredible so far? A gauntlet of possible opponents before Duke even returns to the Final Four. It even had fans of other teams in the state of North Carolina complaining for the Blue Devils.

Maybe this is just the modern era of college basketball, where the best team in the country has the hardest path back to the biggest games of the season.

The best news? If (or, should I say, when) the Blue Devils make it through each and every round, it will only be further proof that John Scheyer had the best team in the country.

Duke's NCAA Tournament run will start on Thursday, March 19, with a first-round game against the Siena Saints, who are the No. 16-seed in the East Region. Before anyone even booked a flight to their first game of the Big Dance, the Blue Devils were favored by 27.5 points.