Old North Banter
Fansided

Duke Blue Devils: A Look at the West

By John Woodcock

Mar 19, 2016; Providence, RI, USA; Duke Blue Devils center Marshall Plumlee (40) and forward Chase Jeter (2) hug after their win over the Yale Bulldogs in a second round game of the 2016 NCAA Tournament at Dunkin Donuts Center. Duke won 71-64. Mandatory Credit: Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 19, 2016; Providence, RI, USA; Duke Blue Devils center Marshall Plumlee (40) and forward Chase Jeter (2) hug after their win over the Yale Bulldogs in a second round game of the 2016 NCAA Tournament at Dunkin Donuts Center. Duke won 71-64. Mandatory Credit: Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports /
facebooktwitterreddit

The Duke Blue Devils hit the Sweet Sixteen looking at a chalk bracket out West. They will have to change that to get to Houston.

The Duke Blue Devils got out of their first two tournament games. They defeated first the UNC Wilmington Seahawks and then the Yale Bulldogs. That got them to Anaheim, site of the West Regional Final. Now they have to win the second four day tournament to get to Houston and the Final Four.

This time the teams in their pod are the top four seeds the West had to offer. Duke will face number 1 seed Oregon while 2 seed Oklahoma faces down a former conference rival in the Texas A&M Aggies. The Aggies are the three seed.

Oklahoma comes from the Big 12, which was thought to be one of the best conferences this year. They have senior guard Buddy Hield lighting up the scoreboard to anchor their team. They are battle-tested, having seen Kansas, Iowa State, and Baylor off and again this year.

Texas A&M has been a quieter story out of the SEC. The SEC did not have a good year as a whole. Kentucky and Vanderbilt joined the Aggies in the NCAA field, but Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina were left out. The relative strength of the SEC makes A&M the biggest question mark in the West, since we just don’t know how good they are.

Oregon is in a similar boat. The Pacific 12 Conference got a lot of love on Selection Sunday. That love came both from the Selection Committee and analysts like Charles Barkley. Now Oregon remains the last man standing after a near escape from St. Joseph’s. USC, Cal, Oregon State, Arizona, and Utah all left last weekend.

More from Old North Banter

Indeed, Oregon is almost ripe for Duke to pick them off. The Ducks run a seven man rotation without much size. Seems Duke just played a team like that in Yale.

I would think that the networks hosting the Tournament would want a Duke-Oklahoma regional final. That would offer the most star power and potentially the most firepower. You could get Hield squaring off against Grayson Allen. Coach K against yet another team ranked number 1 in the country at some points of the season.

Next: Duke: Bring On Yale

Of course that is getting ahead of things. Oregon comes first. Thursday night at 10:00 PM will answer that first question.

Home/Duke Blue Devils