Record: 32-6, 14-4 (3rd place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in Elite 8
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Zion Williamson (ACC POY), R.J. Barrett (1st)
All-Americans: Zion Williamson (National POY), R.J. Barrett (1st)
A completely unique and memorable team in the history of college basketball. After everybody bailed from the 2018 team, Coach K had to start pretty much from scratch, and boy, did he. He hauled in one of the great recruiting classes of all time, with Zion Williamson, R.J. Barrett, Cam Reddish, and Tre Jones, and those four were the core of the team. Probably the least experienced team in college basketball history.
But you’re never quite sure what to expect from a bunch of freshmen until they take the floor, right? Well, they answered that emphatically by absolutely obliterating #2 Kentucky 118-84 in the season opener behind 33 from Barrett, 28 from Zion, 22 from Reddish, and 7 assists and zero turnovers from Jones. So much for freshman jitters?
The baby Blue Devils blazed to a 23-2 start and a #1 ranking heading into a mid-February matchup with eighth-ranked Carolina. Of course you will remember that Zion hurt his knee in the first minute. The Blue Devils lost that game and two more out of the next five without him, culminating with another loss to the Tar Heels in the regular season finale.
But Zion returned for the ACC Tournament and announced it by going 13-for-13 from the floor in an 84-72 drubbing of Syracuse. Duke then got revenge on the Tar Heels, eking out a one-point win with the winning margin coming on a tip-in by (who else?) Zion. In the final, Florida State forestalled the inevitable for a while, but the four freshmen were too much, and Mike Krzyzewski had his umpteenth ACC championship.
In the NCAA Tournament, the Blue Devils survived a couple of tight games to advance to a marquee regional final against a Michigan State team that maybe should have been a #1 seed over Carolina? Duke fans will remember that, down two, Barrett had two free throws to tie it with 4.7 seconds left. He made one of two. Then, in an interesting problem, Duke had only three team fouls in the second half, so they were unable to send the Spartans to the line. For once, Tom Izzo got the best of Coach K, and the Blue Devils were on the short end of a 68-67 thriller.
Such a fascinating team. They had no bench. They couldn’t get a defensive rebound. They were an absolutely terrible three-point shooting team, one of the worst in the nation. They were not a good free-throw shooting team either. And yet, in spite of all that, they were so dominant on the interior that they still had the seventh-most efficient offense and sixth-most efficient defense nationally according to kenpom. They shot 58% from two as a team and dominated the offensive glass. They beat eventual national champion Virginia twice in the regular season. This could have been a national championship team with a couple of different bounces.