No. 1 Duke has accomplished plenty the past couple of weeks and dives in for more Monday night in Raleigh, N.C.
That’s where the Blue Devils face North Carolina State in an Atlantic Coast Conference game.
Already having secured the top seed for the ACC tournament, Duke can collect the outright regular-season league title with a road victory.
“We won’t take this for granted,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “With that said, we don’t like shares (of championships). We have more work that we want to do.”
Duke (27-2, 15-1 ACC) needs one victory — either Monday or in the regular-season finale at home vs. No. 18 North Carolina — to claim the outright ACC title.
The Blue Devils dismantled second-place No. 11 Virginia 77-51 on Saturday.
The ACC achievement is a nice perk, but not something that the Blue Devils are overemphasizing.
“We hardly talked about it,” Scheyer said. “Not because it’s not important, but because this group doesn’t need that to be motivated to play hard. I think that is the thing for a group like they are. This is just the next step, and in the next step, you get a chance to win an ACC championship.”
NC State (19-10, 10-6) has hit another bump, losing road games last week to Virginia and Notre Dame. The Wolfpack are in sixth place in the ACC, but are just one game behind North Carolina and Clemson — and own tiebreakers on both of those teams when it comes to determining seeds for the conference tournament.
NC State has knocked off nationally ranked Clemson and North Carolina this winter, so another conquest would do well to bolster its postseason credentials. Yet recent results are reasons for potential nervous times.
“We’ve lost four out of five,” Wolfpack coach Will Wade said. “We’ve given away really two of the four losses. We’ve pretty much had the game, and we were in control of the game almost the entire game (Saturday at Notre Dame) and we just gave it away.”
Wade said the Wolfpack should be in the mode of fighting for a spot in the NCAA Tournament even with most projections having them safely in the field. These recent setbacks might put some of those projections on pause.
“A pretty big indictment on me and having our guys ready,” Wade said, referring to the outcome vs. Notre Dame. “Which is really, really disappointing.”
NC State is in its third two-game skid of the season, but has avoided losing three in a row.
Duke isn’t likely to be consumed with what happened in the Virginia game with the next assignment against a nearby rival.
“We’ve done it a couple of times (with the Saturday-to-Monday turnaround), and this is what it’s going to be like in March (tournaments),” Blue Devils freshman forward Cameron Boozer said. “It’s a quick turnaround, but it is what it is. We’re going to be all right.”
Boozer has compiled at least 14 points in every game this season.
NC State could have depth concerns because Musa Sagnia, a 6-foot-10 reserve who ordinarily would be counted on to contend with Duke’s interior strength, left Saturday’s overtime loss to Notre Dame with an injured right ankle and didn’t return to action.
The Wolfpack are 4-3 in ACC home games this season. They’re also home for the regular-season finale Saturday vs. Stanford.
–Field Level Media
