NCAA Tournament: Coach K is Back with South’s #1 Seeded Duke

It looked for a while there like Roy Williams and North Carolina were going to dominate college hoops in the ACC for years to come, but things change quickly in basketball. The defending NCAA Champion North Carolina Tar Heels didn’t even have a good enough season to make it to the Big Dance this year.

Rival Duke not only garnered a bid to the Big Dance but also won the ACC Regular Season and ACC tournament. Supposedly Coach K, Mike Krzyzewski, has is best chance of winning the NCAA Championship in years.

Let’s see how good of a chance the Dookies really have.

South: #1 Duke Blue Devils

The Duke Blue Devils are +700 in the sportsbook to win the 2010 NCAA Championship. They lost only 4 games this season, to Wisconsin 73 to 69, Georgia Tech 71 to 67, North Carolina State 88 to 74, Georgetown 89 to 77 and Maryland 79 to 72. Coach K’s squad appears to be peaking with 4 straight victories over North Carolina, Virginia, Miami-Florida and Georgia Tech.

Offense: Duke averages 78 points per game. They shoot 44.1% from the field. They shoot a terrific 763% from the free throw line. Guard Jon Scheyer leads the team in scoring with an 18 average. He also leads the team in assists with 5 per game but the Duke Blue Devils aren’t one-dimensional. Besides Scheyer, Kyle Sigler and Nolan Smith can both put up 20 on any given night. All three of Duke’s top offensive players can create their own shot.

Defense: Duke’s famed man-to-man defense has often brought home a victory for the denizens of Cameron Indoor Stadium. Coach K rarely calls for his fellas to play zone. He believes in forcing the ball into double-teams and then rotating the man-to-man defense. It’s worked well this season as teams have shot only 40% from the field against Duke. Teams average only 61.7 points per game against the Blue Devils.

Prediction: Coach K has the best chance he’s had in a while of winning the whole tournament because this is a classic Duke team. Their guards are excellent with both Smith and Scheyer capable of taking over a game and Sigler being that prototypical Duke forward, a 3-point shooter with the ability to drive to the lane.

But as good as Duke has been, they just don’t have that championship look to them and they definitely don’t have that championship look to them at only +700 in the sportsbook to win it all. I have doubts as to whether or not the Dookies, who racked up 5 losses against suspect competition, deserved the #1 seed when a team like West Virginia had just won the Big East Tournament.

Duke will make it to the Great Eight but then either Richmond, Villanova, Baylor or Notre Dame will knock them out.

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