Duke basketball (23-3, 15-1 ACC) has few blemishes on its resume so far this season with just three losses and none on their home floor. The Blue Devils have lost to Kentucky and Kansas on neutral courts and Clemson on the road this season.
The neutral court loss to Kentucky will not hurt the Blue Devils much as the Wildcats are performing like a top-16 seed in the NCAA Tournament, and one road loss to an in-conference opponent won't be too harmful since Duke has won all 15 of its other ACC contests.
But, Duke's loss to Kansas in Las Vegas earlier this season is looking like a less and less respectable loss by the week.
The Blue Devils fell to the Jayhawks 75-72 on November 27th as part of the Terry's Chocolate Vegas Showdown. At the time, the Jayhawks were the #1-ranked team in the country in the Associated Press Poll, and the loss seemed to just prove that Kansas was in fact the best team in the country.
Hunter Dickinson was ejected early in the second half for kicking Maliq Brown in the head while the two were on the floor and receiving a flagrant 2 foul, but Kansas still managed to get the victory.
However, as this season has progressed, the struggles of Kansas have begun to make this loss look worse for Jon Scheyer and his group.
Kansas lost two of its next three games after beating duke to Creighton and Missouri, and Big 12 play hasn't been kind to the Jayhawks at all since heating up.
Kansas is currently 17-9 overall and 8-7 in Big 12 play, currently putting the program at a tie for fifth place in the Big 12 standings.
Bill Self's squad hasn't won back-to-back games since January 23rd when Kansas beat TCU after beating Kansas State three days prior.
Additionally, the Jayhawks have hit a big speed bump in their season as of late, dropping three of their last four games, with those losses all on the road to Kansas State, Utah, and BYU. The lone win in that stretch came at home to Colorado.
A loss to a middle-of-the-pack conference team like Utah was ugly for Kansas, but the loss that followed up against BYU was even worse, actually the worst loss in the Bill Self era at Kansas.
The Jayhawks fell at BYU, a team that is 18-8 overall and 9-6 in Big 12 play, by a score of 91-57. The 34-point loss was tied for the worst margin in Self's tenure in Lawrence, and the third-worst margin in program history.
Kansas is now 6-7 in Quadrant 1 games and 11-2 across the other three quadrants. The team sits 21st in the NET rankings and was ranked #23 in this week's AP Poll but will almost assuredly drop out of the poll completely after this loss.
The loss will still count as a Quad 1 defeat for the Blue Devils, but the way Kansas' season keeps getting uglier and uglier, having this blemish on the resume won't do any favors for Duke on Selection Sunday.