Duke Back on Top After Embarrassing Maryland

It's been nearly three years since the Duke Blue Devils were No. 1 in the polls.  After crushing Maryland 85-44 in a game where the bench played nearly as many minutes as the starters, it appears that No. 1 is exactly where the Blue Devils will be on Monday when the new polls are released.

For most programs, a three-year absence from being the top ranked team in the country would seem like a blink of the eye; for Duke fans, it borders on an eternity.

The 2005-2006 Blue Devils were the top ranked team in college basketball for most of the season before falling to LSU in the Sweet 16.

Since that game, the closest Duke has come to being on top was achieving a No. 2 ranking in mid-February of last year before running out of gas and losing five of its last 11 games.

But that's all about to change, and no one could be more excited than the Blue Devils themselves.  Only three Duke players (Greg Paulus, David McClure, and Marty Pocius) remain from the 2005-2006 team, and only Paulus and Pocius have ever stepped onto the court as players of the top ranked team in basketball (McClure was sidelined for the entire 2005-2006 season while recovering from knee surgery). 

The rest of Duke's current roster, including all of its starters, will experience that feeling for the first time when the Blue Devils play Wake Forest in Winston-Salem on Wednesday.

With four of its next five games against teams ranked in the top half of the ACC, including away games against Wake and Clemson, and a home match-up against North Carolina, holding on to the No. 1 spot for a considerable amount of time will certainly be a challenge. 

But for a group of players who have consistently been labeled as underachievers by Duke standards due to early exits in the past two post-seasons and a rare absence from the Top 25 rankings in 2007, this achievement is certainly one to celebrate.

For the time being, Duke is back on top.