Next Up – NC State

Date 3/2 || Time 7:00 || Venue Lenovo Center || Video ESPN

Hellooooo, March!

Duke only has two regular season games left: Monday’s trip to Raleigh and Saturday’s home finale vs. UNC.

There’s an interesting coincidence floating around now if you haven’t seen or heard about it. According to Joe Ovies and Joe Giglio, Triangle sports dudes, in 1991, 2010, and 2015, Duke won the national championship…in Indianapolis.

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And in each of those years, before winning championships, Duke lost to NC State…in Raleigh.

Ovies and Giglio are therefore counseling Duke that it might be wise to lose on Monday. When we channel our Inner K, though, he just has one thing to say: nuts!

Okay, that’s not the word our Inner K said, but we can’t print that word here, so nuts it is.

We’re pretty sure Coach K would say something like, well, Joes, we want to win every game and thinking about losing puts you in a losing mindset. We’re going to do our best to win in Raleigh and then the national championship too. And don’t forget that Duke can clinch the regular season ACC Championship in Raleigh.

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So, DBR…could State win Monday night?

Well, yes. Yes, they could, and here’s why.

First, State is a talented team. Are they erratic? Yes. Are they capable of a big night? Oh heck, yes, they are. They are also capable of big lows.

They had a big low against Louisville, an inexplicable 118-77 drubbing. For our fellow mathematically challenged basketball fans, that’s a 41-point loss and an incredible career highlight for Mikel Brown, who racked up 45 points.

They lost the next game to Miami, 77-76, which saw a bizarre late collapse that allowed Miami to score the last 8 points in the last 1:07.

Then after those two bizarro outcomes, State turns up and beats the brakes off of UNC, 82-58.

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Then they inverted the pattern and got blown out by Virginia, 90-61, before losing to Notre Dame in overtime, 96-90.

Could somebody find Ovies and Giglio and mention this to them?