Since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, No. 1 seeds are a perfect 102-0 in the first round.
Don’t tell that to Duke.
Two years after the Blue Devils were a Gerald Henderson layup away from losing to No. 15 Belmont in the first round, Duke is not about to overlook No. 16 Arkansas-Pine Bluff in Friday night’s opening contest, which tips at 7:25 p.m. in Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena.
“One thing this team does know from our experiences is how quickly your season can end,” senior guard Jon Scheyer said. “We know better than everybody that you have to be ready for every game in this Tournament.”
No. 1 Duke (29-5) is ready for a fight from the Golden Lions (18-15), which toppled Winthrop in the Opening Round game Tuesday, 61-44. The win capped an improbable run for Arkansas-Pine Bluff, which spent the first two months of its season on the road, with almost no success.
The Golden Lions played 14 straight road contests to start the year, losing the first 11—including five to NCAA Tournament teams like Georgia Tech, Oklahoma State and Kansas State.
Since the calendar turned to 2010, though, Arkansas-Pine Bluff is 18-4 with a SWAC Tournament Championship and the chance to make history in its first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance.
“It’s crazy, which says a lot about them, the character of their team,” Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “I judge a team by how hard it plays, do they play smart and are they together. And boy, they check off on all three of those categories. Maybe they learned that through some adversity by playing that level of schedule.”
The Golden Lions also have plenty of experience. They start a redshirt junior and four seniors, one of whom is leading scorer Terrance Calvin. But Calvin, who scores 10.3 points per game, is one of just two players to average in double figures for Arkansas-Pine Bluff, which averages 64.3 points per game.
Duke, on the other hand, has three players who score more than 17 points per game in Scheyer, Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith. The trio played a big role in the Blue Devils’ run to the ACC championship last weekend, accounting for 51.7 points per game—nearly 78 percent of Duke’s scoring.
Scheyer, Singler and Smith maintained their performance despite playing three games in three days—a fact perhaps best exemplified by Scheyer’s crucial 3-pointer to sink Georgia Tech in the final minute of Sunday’s title game.
But they still played the most minutes they have in any weekend all year, so a four-day layoff was beneficial. Not learning who Duke would play in the first round until Tuesday night was useful for the same reason: The Blue Devils didn’t even have to consider thinking about Friday’s opponent.
“It gave us time to focus on us, [with] us coming off of a conference championship,” senior forward Lance Thomas said. “The main thing for us is making sure we stay hungry and giving ourselves an extra day or so to focus on things that we need to take care of. I think it was key for us. It gave us the time to flush that win out of our system and refocus for this game.”
And although the Blue Devils discovered their first-round opponent later than any other Tournament team, they maintain that they have had sufficient time to prepare for the Golden Lions.
“We just adjusted,” Krzyzewski said. “We have as much time to prepare for Arkansas-Pine Bluff as we do normally for an opponent, a couple days. So if we knew earlier, we’d probably be overpreparing.”
In any case, Duke is certainly ready for the Tournament as a whole, where the Blue Devils are looking to make their first Final Four since 2004 and advance past the Sweet 16 for the first time in six years.
In a year with few dominant teams, Duke thinks it has as much of a chance as any squad to get to Indianapolis.
“We’re not a great team, but we’re a very good team that usually doesn’t beat ourselves,” Krzyzewski said. “But obviously we can be beaten by a lot of people.”
The Blue Devils hope that doesn’t include the first successful No. 16 seed in NCAA Tournament history.
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