How many games are played in March Madness?
No need to picture a bracket or do any manual counting, there’s an easy trick. Of the 68 teams who make the tournament, 67 have to lose. Sixty-seven games means 67 losers and one national champion.
After winning the ACC regular-season and tournament titles, Duke is gunning to be the last one standing, while the rest of the field is head-hunting the top seed. Only three teams have beaten the Blue Devils all season, and two of those losses came before the new year. While both Kentucky and Kansas outplayed Duke, it is not helpful to analyze those games with months of added context. Since then, Clemson has been the sole blemish, and the Blue Devils even won a pair of high-leverage games without superstar Cooper Flagg.
However, the ACC Tournament also showed that the Blue Devils are not invincible. In the first half against Louisville and the second against North Carolina, Duke’s opponents were the aggressors. As with any win against an elite team, that is the first prerequisite; head coach Jon Scheyer’s team has shown the lion-like instinct to pounce on prey that cannot match its intensity.
The other reasons various teams have found themselves on runs against the Blue Devils are more subtle. More than making a high-percentage of shots, winning the rebounding battle and avoiding turnovers, how can another team beat Duke? Maybe more important, what pieces do teams need?
Find the right matchups
A great example of success against the Blue Devils comes from an unlikely source — the 12-19 Boston College Eagles. In a trip to Chestnut Hill, Mass., Duke eventually coasted to a 25-point win, but Chad Venning stole the show early on. The 6-foot-9, 270-pound center scored nine points in the first half, crashed the offensive glass hard and thoroughly outplayed freshman Khaman Maluach. Scheyer had no answer to Venning until the second half, when the big man was worn down and his team eventually gave way.
Venning exemplifies a type of player the Blue Devils have struggled to defend: a sure-footed, physically imposing big man whose main task is to find the basket on offense. Duke is at its best on defense when its constant switching prevents guards from driving past the free-throw line. A frontcourt player with the ability to both pass and score out of the post takes that advantage away.
However, a one-man matchup problem is a necessary, but not sufficient component in beating the Blue Devils. What happened to Venning also happened to Louisville’s Terrence Edwards Jr. in the ACC championship and countless other players over the course of the season. Scheyer’s defensive unit is too good to get punked by one player. Be it a halftime adjustment, a change in guarding responsibilities or mixing up ball-screen coverages, Duke will get the ball out of the No. 1 option’s hands.
In fact, a team that beats the Blue Devils should have more than two matchup advantages.
Take the ACC Tournament semifinal, where the Tar Heels’ Elliot Cadeau, Ven-Allen Lubin and Seth Trimble all became problems for Duke on the defensive end in the second half. Despite losing a few inches to the Blue Devils’ entire backcourt, Trimble and Cadeau consistently won in transition and got to the basket to score, get fouled or distribute. Duke’s original solution was to pressure Cadeau hard enough to force it out of his hands, while also emphasizing denying Lubin in the post. But Trimble’s own fast-break drives forced the Blue Devils out onto their toes, like trying to catch three balls with two arms. The fact that RJ Davis — North Carolina’s leading scorer — was also a threat further exacerbated Duke’s lapses.
The Tar Heels fielded the second kind of player Scheyer’s team has had a tough time with: smaller, quicker guards with a knack for creating space. For another example, 5-foot-11 Notre Dame guard Markus Burton laid 23 on the Blue Devils, though he was overshadowed by a 42-point outing from Cooper Flagg. Length on the perimeter is certainly a strength for the Blue Devils, but it can be harder for a taller guard like Sion James or Kon Knueppel to follow the feet of a player like Cadeau, Davis or Burton.
Duke won by the skin of its teeth, but by the end of the game, North Carolina was in the driver’s seat. After identifying where they could gain an edge, the Tar Heels leaned hard into those matchups. More than that, though, they did it their way.
Play your game, not Duke’s
It is no secret that North Carolina likes to play fast — ranking 34th in adjusted tempo, according to KenPom. Getting out in transition was the biggest key in the Tar Heels near comeback, but it is not the only way to get past Duke.
Wake Forest, another in-state rival, gave the Blue Devils a major scare in Winston-Salem, N.C., Jan. 25. The Demon Deacons play a starkly different game, looking to slow a track meet into a slug fest. With center Efton Reid III and leading scorer Hunter Sallis, Wake Forest had a few places where it could look to exploit Duke, but the reason it led with 5:44 remaining was due to its suffocating defense.
Because of their syrupy pace, the Demon Deacons make every miss feel like three, often creating a psychological pressure that affects shooters. Sure enough, the Blue Devils shot just 9-for-32 from 3-point range, well below their season average.
The point here is this: Duke will not lose if it is calling the shots. An aspiring giant slayer must dictate the flow of the game, and create situations instead of reacting to them.
If not for the late-game heroics of Purdue transfer Mason Gillis, Wake Forest could very well have stormed the court for the second time in two years against Duke.
The only team that did get such an experience were the Clemson Tigers. Viktor Lahkin, Ian Schefflein and Chase Hunter got looks they wanted to. Flagg was forced to play constant interior defense and could not find a rhythm on offense for most of the game. The Tigers were physical and confident, and their game plan was simple: make tough shots. Clemson shot 58.8% from the field, becoming the first team all season to shoot above 50% against Duke.
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As the first 10 minutes of the game stretched into 20, then 30, the Blue Devils kept waiting for the home team to get cold and go on one of those classic Duke runs. But the Tigers never did.
The key to the Blue Devils’ stifling defense has not been a massive turnover margin or press system, it’s been simplicity. Duke’s opponents average 19.1 seconds per possession, the longest in the nation. Scheyer’s system, and his players’ elite athleticism, forces offenses into running near-perfect sets only to get contested looks.
Still, Clemson looked completely comfortable in its offense. Nor were the Tigers dissuaded by the Blue Devils’ own attack led by Tyrese Proctor. It was clear that Clemson thought it could make more buckets than Duke, and it was right. Flagg finally caught flame in the game’s final minutes, but a slip on the baseline sealed the Tigers as the only ACC team all season to win against the Blue Devils.
Play a 40-minute game
Perhaps more than their shot making, the Tigers’ biggest advantage was their aggression. They established a level of physicality from the tip that allowed them to constantly pressure the Blue Devils without fouling. No movement was comfortable, no catch clean. Clemson also outrebounded Duke by 13, including 11 offensive boards. Usually, when watching the Blue Devils it is clear that the other team is trying to keep up. In this game, the Tigers were the ones doing the hunting.
Duke’s offense is simply too good to allow it to run without intervention. The list of shot makers on the roster stretches a mile, and once a player like Isaiah Evans sees one go down, the rim gets about 10 inches wider. So, a team looking to beat the Blue Devils needs to disrupt.
One of the best individual defensive efforts on Flagg came from N.C. State’s Dontrez Styles. The 6-foot-6 forward lived on the freshman superstar’s hip, and probably would have trailed Flagg back into the locker room if allowed. Flagg, a player known for the ease with which he plays, could not have looked more uncomfortable, and the Wolfpack even built a 13-point lead.
But the problem with such coverage is that it often leads to foul trouble. Styles picked up his third personal foul with 17:44 remaining in the second half, and the Blue Devils’ wore down N.C. State until the Wolfpack’s physicality subsided.
The biggest key to an aggressive defense is depth. It is unreasonable to expect one player, like Styles, to guard a talent like Flagg for a whole game. A team that beats Duke by outmuscling it should have at least nine, probably 10, players capable of playing key minutes.
Clemson sent out 10 players in its win. Back in November, Kentucky’s experience allowed it to play 10 as well, rotating defensive assignments on Flagg to tire him out. Louisville only fielded seven, and was running on empty by the end of the game.
***
Most of the examples of beating Duke come from teams that, well, did not beat Duke. The Blue Devils have lost one game in 2025 and appear to somehow still have their best basketball ahead of them.
When Duke lost to the Jayhawks and the Wildcats, players like Isaiah Evans and Patrick Ngongba II did not see the floor. Scheyer has 10 players he can feel confident playing for significant minutes. The top of the Blue Devils’ lineup is strong, but their own depth is what makes them one of, if not the best team in the country.
Plenty of teams have been capable of beating Duke for 20 minutes. Less have lasted longer than 30. Sixty-seven other teams have a shot, but it remains to be seen if another opponent can stay in the ring for the full 40.
Dom Fenoglio is a Trinity junior and a sports managing editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.