Duke Basketball: Blue Devils Back on Track to Secure a 1-Seed After Syracuse Win

You would never know it by the media coverage surrounding Kentucky, but there will actually be four No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament. Duke’s blowout victory over Syracuse on Saturday kept the Blue Devils on the fast track to secure one of them.

Duke looked the part of a dominant March powerhouse during its 73-54 victory, and it didn’t even get an overpowering offensive performance from superstar Jahlil Okafor (13 points, although he did grab 14 rebounds and dish out four assists).

Justise Winslow carried the offensive load and scored 23 points to go along with nine rebounds, three blocks and two steals. It was arguably his best individual performance of the season, which is a scary proposition for Duke’s opponents in the stretch run and the NCAA tournament.

If the uber-athletic Winslow starts to fully realize his offensive potential to go along with his stifling defense, Duke will have yet another weapon at its disposal alongside Okafor in the frontcourt.

Gerry Broome/Associated Press

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim certainly understood how important Winslow was in the game for Duke, as he showed with his postgame comments, via Phil D’Abbraccio of The Daily Orange:

The best part of the win from Duke's perspective was how completely different the Blue Devils looked from Wednesday’s game against Virginia Tech.

It took overtime to knock off a terrible Hokies squad, largely because Duke struggled to get stops the entire game. Virginia Tech drilled wide-open three after wide-open three and had no problem getting to the rim on dribble penetration whenever it needed a big play. 

The important thing for coach Mike Krzyzewski's squad was that it got the victory, but Duke gets graded on a different curve than most teams. It is going for a No. 1 seed, and it looked more than shaky against Virginia Tech. A loss would have been crippling to the Blue Devils’ chances.

Yahoo Sports’ Pat Forde underscored the mindset during the Virginia Tech game:

Many of those concerns were answered in Saturday’s game, though, and it is much easier to see the contest against the Hokies as an anomaly than a worrisome pattern of things to come. The overall resume is what stands out now with Duke when discussing the chance at a No. 1 seed, more so even than any lingering concerns after Virginia Tech.

Gerry Broome/Associated Press

The Blue Devils have now won nine games in a row and 12 of 13 after a two-game hiccup early in the ACC schedule (North Carolina State and Miami). Getting hot at the right time is exactly what it takes to win in March, and it is safe to say Duke fits in that category.

It’s not as if all those victories came against the bottom-dwellers of the league either.

The Blue Devils handed Virginia its only loss of the season, beat Syracuse twice, held off their hated archrivals, North Carolina, and avenged an earlier loss to Notre Dame with a 30-point beatdown in the rematch during the win streak. Outside of Kentucky, there might not be a team playing better basketball than the Blue Devils (even with a couple of close victories).

Gerry Broome/Associated Press

The overall profile is starting to look like something of a No. 1 seed, especially when nonconference victories over Stanford, Michigan State, Connecticut and especially Wisconsin (on the road) are taken into consideration, as well.

The victory over the Badgers came in the Kohl Center (where nobody wins) and represents a head-to-head win over a fellow No. 1 seed contender. If Kentucky, Virginia and Gonzaga seize three of the No. 1 seeds, that win over Wisconsin will go a long way for the Blue Devils’ chances at grabbing the fourth.

At this point, it is all about what is to come for Krzyzewski’s squad in its battle for a top seed in the Big Dance.

Gerry Broome/Associated Press

A home game against Wake Forest should be a formality (although the same could have been said about the Virginia Tech game), but the trip to Chapel Hill for the final regular-season contest and rematch against the Tar Heels looms.

The Blue Devils will need an even better performance than their overtime victory in the first game against North Carolina considering this one is on the road, but if Winslow plays like he did Saturday, that is not an unrealistic expectation.

Between Okafor, a resurgent Winslow, Tyus Jones' running the show at point and Quinn Cook as the senior leader ready to drill a clutch shot, Duke has the pieces to beat North Carolina and even win the ACC tournament.

Doing that would certainly clinch a No. 1 seed in the Big Dance and perhaps even clear the way for a Final Four or national-championship run.

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