Best Tournament Games by Round

[em0526]

My son recently asked me what was the best Duke game in the NCAA tournament.
I couldn't give him a straight answer because there have been so many so I tried to break it down by what round the games occurred in.

Based on how exciting the games were - I went with the following:

Final Game - 2010 vs Butler
Final Four - 1991 vs UNLV (but the comeback against Maryland in 2001 was also pretty epic)
Elite Eight - 1992 vs Kentucky (but the 1990 game against UConn was also really good)
Sweet Sixteen - 2019 vs Virginia Tech
Second Round - 2019 vs UCF
First Round - 2008 vs Belmont

I am sure that I missed on some but I was wondering what everyone else thought.

[pfrduke]

My son recently asked me what was the best Duke game in the NCAA tournament.
I couldn't give him a straight answer because there have been so many so I tried to break it down by what round the games occurred in.

Based on how exciting the games were - I went with the following:

Final Game - 2010 vs Butler
Final Four - 1991 vs UNLV (but the comeback against Maryland in 2001 was also pretty epic)
Elite Eight - 1992 vs Kentucky (but the 1990 game against UConn was also really good)
Sweet Sixteen - 2019 vs Virginia Tech
Second Round - 2019 vs UCF
First Round - 2008 vs Belmont

I am sure that I missed on some but I was wondering what everyone else thought.

At least for the first three rounds, I would take wins that didn’t give me a heart attack. That Belmont game certainly didn’t feel like our “best” while we were playing it.

[Truth&Justise]

At least for the first three rounds, I would take wins that didn’t give me a heart attack. That Belmont game certainly didn’t feel like our “best” while we were playing it.

Good point. As a result of being a highly ranked team, our early round games are usually either heart-attack-inducing or complete snoozers (not that I'm complaining about a blowout win). Can't think of a particularly satisfying first round win at this point.

For a satisfying, non-heart-attack second round game, I might suggest 2009 v Texas. Or maybe 2016 v. Yale, if you can stomach us almost blowing a huge first half lead.

But for the Sweet 16, I can think of a handful of solid, hard fought wins recently: 2010 v Purdue, 2013 v Michigan St, and 2015 v Utah. Some are available on YouTube.