2013 March Madness: Duke Lucky to be No. 2 Seed After Loss to Maryland

It’s that time of year again and the Duke Blue Devils are poised to make a run in the 2013 NCAA basketball tournament. Duke enters the tournament with a number two seed. But do they deserve the No. 2 seed after a second loss the Maryland Terrapins in the 2013 ACC tournament?

I think they do, but they should consider themselves lucky. All of their losses came to conference opponents.  All of those teams are hungrier every year to upset the undisputed king of the conference.  Have you ever been to the Comcast Center in College Park, Maryland where the Terps play?  The school gets up for one game per year.  That’s it.  That game is the Duke game.

Duke may have the Cameron Crazies, but Terps fans are indeed the sixth man. The chants from the crowd are deafening and often profanity laced. Duke is almost always the better team, but for some reason they cannot shake the lowly Terps.  It is their championship game. It’d be nice if the Terps played that hard against every opponent, but they don’t.

A loss to the Miami Hurricanes can’t take any credit away from Duke either, but here’s why the Blue Devils should consider themselves lucky for that No. 2 seed. They lost to Maryland…again… on the road…in Greensboro too for that matter. It may be the fire that Duke needs lit under them at the right  time, but it was essentially a home game for them.

And here’s why it matters.  Maryland simply isn’t good.  They have no character.  They only want to beat Duke for the ghost of Gary Williams, I guess. Losing to them says you don’t care.  The Blue Devils were looking forward.  They were looking past a team capable of beating them on pure emotion alone because it sure isn’t skill they used to do it.

If Maryland can beat you, so can a No. 15 seed. They should feel lucky to be sitting where they are in the tournament. I don’t see the Blue Devils as a championship team this season.  Look for them to aim their focus on the future again. The only problem is that when you do that in the tournament, you don’t make it into the future.

Prediction: Duke loses to the winner of the Creighton/Cincinnati game in the second round.