Does Duke Deserve to be in the NCAA Tournament?

By Have Jumpshot Will Travel (a.k.a. Trashtalk Superstar)

Last night, Duke lost to North Carolina State in the first round of the ACC tournament. After the game, ESPN All Night host Jason Smith said that Duke doesn't deserve to get an NCAA Tournament bid. Smith acknowledged that they had some impressive wins early in the season, but reasoned that with a 22-10 record, and with their late-season collapse, Coach K's guys just aren't that good. He said that if their jerseys didn't say Duke, nobody would consider this team to be anything more than mediocre.

He may be right.

Over the last ten to fifteen years, Duke has become the premier program in college basketball. They now occupy the position in college hoops that Notre Dame has long held in football. Just as every Notre Dame football game is broadcast on NBC, every Duke basketball game is nationally televised. And, like Notre Dame, Duke has a polarizing effect on fans. No team in college basketball engenders more unabated hatred than do the preppy boys in blue and white. Fans watch their games to root against them as much, if not more so, as they do to root for them.

That's why there's no chance that Duke will be left out of the NCAA Tournament. What's more, they will be seeded favorably. Expect nothing lower than a 6 seed for these Blue Devils.
Despite their protests to the contrary, the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee engineers the Tournament to have the sexiest field possible. Fun though it may be to have Cinderella teams from mid major conferences make deep Tournament runs, the Selection Committee wants teams like Duke, North Carolina, Connecticut, Syracuse, Kentucky and Kansas to make it past week one (insert Kansas joke here). The NCAA Tournament is an enormous revenue generating industry. With a multi-billion dollar television contract, sky high advertising rates, and an enormous viewing audience (remember, gambling has nothing to do with the Tournament's popularity), the NCAA wants the big names on the marquee.

So a mediocre Duke team will waltz into the Tournament, having been awarded an inordinately high seed. They will likely bow out early. Objectively, it's difficult to see Duke as anything more than a bubble team that should be left to sweat it out on Selection Sunday - as they await word of their fate (and fret that they ended the season on a down swing). Say what you will about Jason Smith. He's clearly attempting to be edgy, trying to stir controversy. But he's got a point. Duke probably belongs in the NIT.