Duke up to No. 5 ... 96th straight week in top 10

[Olympic Fan]

The new polls are out and Duke is up to No. 5 in both the AP and the coaches polls:

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/rankings

UNC up to No. 9 in both polls; NC State drops to No. 15 in the Coaches rankings; No. 16 in the AP.

Interesting that Duke's next four opponents are likely to be (in the AP):

No. 26 Minnesota (five votes behind San Diego State for the official 25th place)

No. 19 (down from 17 despite two wins) Memphis

No. 2 Louisville

No. 3 Ohio State

By next Wednesday night, we'll have a pretty good idea of how Duke stacks up.

Obviously our streak of consecutive top 10 rankings in the AP is now up to 96 ... that's the second longest such streak in history, but still well short of UCLA's record of 150 or so straight during Wooden's heydey.

[davekay1971]

This early season schedule is brutal and I love it. I was happy to see us beat KY, but even happier to see the team perform so well. Now we get to see Duke against, hopefully, 3 tournament calibre teams on a neutral court. It's early season, so, while winning these games is an important goal, playing great competition to establish our habits of how to fight and face tough, athletic teams is much more important. I'd love to see Duke go 4-0 against that gauntlet and be a top 2 or 3 team, but I'm reminding myself that the real benefit is establishing our scorers, letting Seth figure out what he can and can't do against good competition on his leg, getting Cook established as our point, getting Sulaimon and hopefully Jefferson and Murphy exposure to top competition in a tournament atmosphere, etc...

[Cro]

I'll never understand why some AP ballots look the way they do. Although it means very little, having Kentucky ahead of Duke at this point seems pretty ridiculous.

[throatybeard]

The new polls are out and Duke is up to No. 5 in both the AP and the coaches polls:

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/rankings

UNC up to No. 9 in both polls; NC State drops to No. 15 in the Coaches rankings; No. 16 in the AP.

Interesting that Duke's next four opponents are likely to be (in the AP):

No. 26 Minnesota (five votes behind San Diego State for the official 25th place)

No. 19 (down from 17 despite two wins) Memphis

No. 2 Louisville

No. 3 Ohio State

By next Wednesday night, we'll have a pretty good idea of how Duke stacks up.


If we go 3-1 against that, there should be a parade.

[OZZIE4DUKE]

96 straight weeks ranked in the top 10, 96 straight non-conference wins in Cameron. Nice symmetry there! I hope both get to 97 next week after we beat Ohio State next week! :cool:

[UrinalCake]

If we go 3-1 against that, there should be a parade.

Don't forget that last season we beat Tennessee, Michigan, and Kansas on consecutive days in Maui (all ranked teams at the time) in addition to the record-setting game against Michigan State. Then came the collapse at OSU. At that point we had one loss, a handful of big wins, and Mason was playing like a lottery pick after holding his own or bettering the likes of Thomas Robinson and Jared Sullinger. Unfortunately, the end of the season didn't go quite as well as we probably expected at that point.

Early season wins are great and a ton of fun to watch, but it's a long season and a lot can happen either way.

[Olympic Fan]

Don't forget that last season we beat Tennessee, Michigan, and Kansas on consecutive days in Maui (all ranked teams at the time) in addition to the record-setting game against Michigan State. Then came the collapse at OSU. At that point we had one loss, a handful of big wins, and Mason was playing like a lottery pick after holding his own or bettering the likes of Thomas Robinson and Jared Sullinger. Unfortunately, the end of the season didn't go quite as well as we probably expected at that point.

Not to pick a nit, but Tennessee was not ranked when we played them last year. In fact, they were not ranked or even close to ranked last year. They were en route to a 19-15 NIT season, rebuilding after Bruce Pearl's ignomous exit.

Duke's early season schedule last year included:

Five straight unranked teams to open the season. Even Michigan State was unranked when we beat them in Game 3 (although they would finish No. 5, the Spartans did not make the poll until Dec. 12)

No. 15 Michigan in the Maui semifinals (they would finish the season as No. 13)

No. 14 Kansas in the Maui finals (they would finish No. 6 in the last poll -- and in the national title game).

No. 2 Ohio State in the ACC Big Ten Challenge (they would finish No. 7).

After that, we didn't play a ranked opponent until Virginia on Jan. 12.

My point is that on paper, this year's early test is tougher in the sense that we could face No. 3, (unoffiically No. 26), No. 19, No. 2 and No. 3 (again, although a different No. 3).

Last year we "only" faced No. 14, No. 15 and No. 2 -- based on their rank at the time. Of course, if you take final rank into account, Duke beat No. 5, No. 6 and No. 13 -- and lost to No. 7. We'll have to wait until the final poll this year to see how the final ranks stack up, but in term of ranks at the tiome of the game, this year's slate is MUCH tougher.

PS It's interesting to me that Duke's top 10 streak survived the lopsided loss to Ohio State last year. Duke was No. 6 in Maui, climbed to No. 3 after its Maui wins and dropped to No. 7 after losing to Ohio State. I would hope that Duke could survive one loss in November and remain a top 10 team..

[MCFinARL]

This early season schedule is brutal and I love it. I was happy to see us beat KY, but even happier to see the team perform so well. Now we get to see Duke against, hopefully, 3 tournament calibre teams on a neutral court. It's early season, so, while winning these games is an important goal, playing great competition to establish our habits of how to fight and face tough, athletic teams is much more important. I'd love to see Duke go 4-0 against that gauntlet and be a top 2 or 3 team, but I'm reminding myself that the real benefit is establishing our scorers, letting Seth figure out what he can and can't do against good competition on his leg, getting Cook established as our point, getting Sulaimon and hopefully Jefferson and Murphy exposure to top competition in a tournament atmosphere, etc...

This tournament field is so stacked that any matchup would be against an arguably tournament-caliber team (VCU, Stanford, Missouri, Northern Iowa are the rest of the teams), so hoping may not be necessary (although obviously we hope for Duke to win its games, including the final).

[Dukeblue91]

For Duke to win the next 4 games would be quite the accomplishment and feat.
It can be done but still.
I do hope that we will beat Ohio State soundly for revenge if nothing else.