In mostly forgettable ACC men’s basketball season on Tobacco Road, at least we’ve had Duke
About four and a half minutes remained Monday night in Duke’s latest ACC annihilation when the students at Cameron Indoor Stadium began serenading Wake Forest with a sustained chant of “N-I-T ... N-I-T ... N-I-T.” It was hardly as insulting as what was actually happening on the court, where the Demon Deacons, allegedly in contention for an NCAA Tournament bid, trailed by 37.
The party at Cameron Indoor was long underway. The place was rocking. The result was long assured. And in those moments came two clear thoughts, and questions, in the final minutes of the Blue Devils’ eventual 93-60 victory:
Is Duke really this absurdly, almost inconceivably good, to make yet another ACC rival look like a glorified high school team? And is the rest of the conference (Clemson and Louisville notwithstanding) really this absurdly, almost inconceivably bad? The apparent answers, after more than two months of largely similar happenings: Yes. And, yes.
There was a time in the not-so distant past — and throughout most of the ACC’s storied men’s basketball history, really — when an early-March Senior Night between Tobacco Road adversaries would’ve meant something, or at least come with some degree of stakes. There was a time when a meeting like the one Monday night would’ve brought out the best in Big Four men’s basketball.
This is March, after all. Early March, yes, but March, nonetheless — “the best time of year, for me,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said Monday night, and the best time of year for a great many sports-minded North Carolinians. More than any other conference, the ACC is responsible for making this month what it is. March Madness isn’t nearly as mad without Jimmy V looking for a hug or without Laettner’s turnaround at the buzzer or without Luke Maye in Memphis; March isn’t March, simply, without the Triangle’s innumerable contributions to the best month in sports.
Monday night in Durham, though, only served to reinforce two colliding truths. One, Duke is as formidable as any conference team since at least 2009, when North Carolina coasted to the national championship. And two, outside of Duke, these are dark times, indeed, throughout the rest of Tobacco Road, where UNC, N.C. State and Wake are all navigating various degrees of crisis.
It’s one thing for ACC men’s basketball to be mired in a general state of disrepair. Expansion has made the conference a bloated, unrecognizable version of itself and, besides, success is cyclical — or was, in a time before football television revenue concentrated incomprehensible wealth in the Big Ten and SEC. But it’s another thing for schools that helped build an entire sport to find themselves competing so far below their historical norms.
State, less than a year after its improbable run to the ACC Tournament championship and its first Final Four since 1983, is hobbling through one of its worst seasons ever and stands a good chance of not even making the conference tournament. At UNC, meanwhile, every game has become a referendum on coach Hubert Davis. The Tar Heels are perhaps the most bubbly of NCAA Tournament bubble teams, and may well miss the Dance for the second time in Davis’ four seasons.
And then there’s Wake, which has made one NCAA Tournament (as part of the First Four, no less) in the past 14 seasons. The Demon Deacons arrived in Durham in desperation mode, in dire need of a season-saving performance, and instead steadily wilted throughout the second half — their deficit going from seven points just after halftime to 20 points, and then from 20 to 30 to 40.
“Manhandled,” beleaguered coach Steve Forbes said, and that about covered it.
Perhaps none of this was all that surprising. Wake, after all, has been slumping for a while now, its 10-3 start in conference play becoming more and more of a distant memory; a mirage, in hindsight. Duke, meanwhile, is making a habit of 30-point victories, and the 33-point margin on Monday was actually the narrowest among the Blue Devils’ past four games.
Still: How can the gap be so wide between Duke and pretty much everyone else in the ACC? And how can a team competing for its postseason life show up and prove to be so thoroughly uncompetitive? We may find ourselves asking the same exact things Saturday in Chapel Hill, where Duke can all but extinguish North Carolina’s off-again, on-again NCAA Tournament hopes — on again, for now, in the midst of a five-game winning streak against middling-to-bad ACC teams.
Weird things happen in rivalry games, yes, and UNC has appeared to turn a bit of a corner, albeit against suspect competition. Duke, though, has been impervious to the usual perils of Tobacco Road. The Blue Devils embarrassed Wake on Monday, after surviving a legitimate test in Winston-Salem in January. They dominated the Tar Heels the first time they played. They looked human for a while against N.C. State, only to make that look easy, too, in the end. And more recently, it just looks like nobody can hang with Duke, in the ACC or anywhere.
“It’s not normal, what we’re doing,” Scheyer said, “and we don’t take it lightly and we don’t take it for granted.”
Indeed, this kind of dominance is rare, even for a program of Duke’s pedigree. But it’s “not normal,” either, for the ACC to be as awful as it is — with only three of its 18 teams assured of an NCAA Tournament bid, less than two weeks from Selection Sunday — and for Duke’s local rivals to offer so little resistance. The Blue Devils finished their home schedule undefeated — 17-0 — and the sad truth is that there wasn’t all that much difference between their early-season routs of overmatched teams (Maine, Army, Seattle, et al) and what they did once the conference schedule started.
Duke won its 10 ACC home games by an average of nearly 25 points. Only one of those games was decided by single digits. Only two others were decided by less than 20. And none of those three — the “closest” of Duke’s conference home games — was really even as close as those scores indicated. Monday night, it seemed, might at last present a bit of a test. But, well, so much for that.
When it ended, mercifully, Scheyer and two of his seniors — transfers Mason Gillis and Sion James — thanked the home crowd and spoke of the pursuit of greater things to come. The student section broke out in a spirited chant of “one more year! ... one more year!” directed at Cooper Flagg, the overwhelming choice to be the No. 1 selection in the NBA Draft. Flagg, who finished with a robust line just short of a triple-double (28 points, eight rebounds, seven assists) took a victory lap, wearing a wide smile as he slapped hands on his way off the court.
Before he disappeared through a door and into the Duke locker room, one part of his college journey already in the past, he leaped upward and delivered a sort of pantomime dunk against the wood paneling that borders the upper level seating at Cameron. He called it “the best place in college basketball, for sure,” and night after night he’d exceeded even the loftiest expectations that have surrounded him, for years.
“I mean, I’ve loved every single minute of being here,” he said, without articulating what everyone already knew — that he’d played his final college home game. He reflected upon his memorable dunk against Pitt. And another one against N.C. State. And another time, also in that victory against State, when Cameron grew so loud he felt the building shake.
Still, there was almost a somberness to it all, as if Flagg had played his final college home game without reaping the true experience of Cameron. There were hardly any close games, and none in conference play. No overtimes. No buzzer beaters. None of that late-game drama that would have become a part of the lore of the place. Only rote dominance, a basketball machine dispatching weak competition with a regularity that suggested it was unworthy of sharing a court.
As brilliant as Flagg and his teammates have been, it has made for something of an anticlimatic journey. The dominance has been spectacular, and also somewhat boring. It’s difficult to understand where Duke’s greatness ends and where the ACC’s overall men’s basketball ineptitude begins, or vice versa. Senior Night, it turned out, offered yet another reminder of what we’ve long known: The ACC is as bad as it has ever been, and Duke might just be as good.
This story was originally published March 4, 2025 at 9:15 AM with the headline "In mostly forgettable ACC men’s basketball season on Tobacco Road, at least we’ve had Duke."
