Originally Posted by
Kedsy
The biggest factor affecting our chance of repeating as national champion is the randomness factor in a one-and-done tournament. When you're playing against good teams in a high pressure situation like the NCAAT, you can lose. In fact, you could make a pretty strong case that the "best" team in the country fails to win the championship a lot more than half the time.
All the factors you name have to do with whether Duke will be the best team, but with the personnel we have you can bet we'll at least be one of the best teams unless we have an unanticipated injury or total meltdown. Absent something really weird happening you can more or less write us in as a #1 or #2 seed (probably #1 but you never know). But as we all know, being a number one seed in no way means you'll win the whole shebang.
The next biggest factor that could affect our chance of winning is injuries. Lots of great teams have been derailed by injuries to their top players and we just have to hope it doesn't happen to us.