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Keith Srakocic / Associated Press
The Duke men’s basketball team are having a historic season, but not the way they would like.
Duke fell to Notre Dame 93-89 on Tuesday to drop to 7-8 on the season. This is the first time since 1999 that the program has set a record below 0.500, according to Kyle boone from CBS Sports.
According to FanSided’s Matt Giles, it’s been even longer since the Blue Devils were below 0.500 in February, which they haven’t done since 1995.
The program is in grave danger of missing the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1995, when legendary head coach Mike Krzyzewski was on leave to recover from back surgery, per Mike Lopresti from NCAA.com. The Blue Devils went 13-18 that year and had just two ACC wins.
Their regular-season struggles could see them demoted to NIT, where they haven’t appeared since 1981 – Krzyzewski’s first year with the team. Duke’s all-time winning leader hijacked a question about the tournament when speaking to reporters on Monday (h / t Giles):
“I think planning ahead during this season is not a good idea, and also, just to keep your eyes on the road and try to be as good as possible. To be completely frank with you, we We haven’t talked about it with our team So we’ll think about everything. I just hope we have our ACC tournament … I’m all for the ACC tournament.
A perennial contender, Duke has lost six of his last eight games and is 5-6 in ACC play. The team was ranked ninth in the AP Top 25 preseason poll, a spot ahead of Kentucky, another typically strong team struggling in 2021. The Wildcats, who had the best recruiting class in the country, didn’t have that 5-12.
The latest edition of the poll was missing Kentucky, Duke, Kansas and North Carolina, which had not happened since December 18, 1961, according to Adam zagoria of New York Times.
If Duke and the other top NCAA programs don’t take shape quickly, March will have a new feel.
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