ACC tournament preview: No. 8 Georgia Tech vs. No. 1 Duke

Duke won more ACC games than any team in the league’s history this season.

The Blue Devils not only racked them up at an impressive rate, they got better as the year went — evidenced by the winning margin of 27.6 across the last seven ACC games (which doesn’t include the 43-point dismantling of Illinois).

Now they should lose in the ACC tournament.

No, that’s not serious. But it is, at least, worth considering the history involved here.

In all likelihood, Duke has done what it needs to do for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. The Blue Devils are loaded and enter postseason play as the No. 1-ranked team in the Associated Press poll. They’re a betting favorite to win the program’s sixth national championship.

As that’s the endgame, there’s this ominous nugget: Each of the last three national champions from the ACC, and six of the last seven, have lost in the semifinals of the ACC tournament.

That list is: UNC in 2017, ’09 and ’05, Duke in 2015, Virginia in 2019 and Maryland in 2002 (the Terrapins are obviously no longer in the league). Extra rest served them well, apparently, as well as some revenged-fueled feelings after bitterness of losing early in the league’s tournament.

The exception to the trend is the team that featured Duke’s current coach.

Jon Scheyer and Duke won the ACC tournament, and then the national championship in 2010.

Over the next three days — starting with Thursday’s game against Georgia Tech — we’ll see which bit of history the Blue Devils will be following.

Here’s what to know ahead of Thursday’s quarterfinal game:

Time: Noon.

Location: Spectrum Center, Charlotte.

TV: ESPN.

Announcers: Dave O’Brien (play-by-play), Cory Alexander (analyst) and Angel Gray (sidelines).

Series; last meeting: Duke leads 79-25; Duke won 82-56 in December, at Georgia Tech, this season. Kon Knueppel had 18 points, five assists and four rebounds in that game, and Khaman Maluach scored 15 points on 5-for-5 shooting.

ACC tournament history: Duke’s last game against GT in the ACC tournament came with Scheyer on the court. That was Duke’s 65-61 win in the 2010 championship game, with Scheyer scoring 16 points and hitting a crucial 3-pointer in the final minute. Kyle Singler was the tournament MVP and had 20 points in the title game.

The winner will play: Either 5-seed North Carolina or 4-seed Wake Forest at 7 p.m. Friday in a semifinal game.

Records: Georgia Tech 17-15; Duke 28-3.

Stat to watch: 14.

That was how many turnovers Duke had in Saturday night’s win at UNC, the most since a season-high-tying 16 at Wake Forest on Jan. 25.

It was alarming — as much as can be possible in a 13-point win — to see Duke stripped and losing the ball as often as it did against the Tar Heels. The most turnovers Duke had between that win at Wake Forest and Saturday night’s game was 10.

When Duke and GT played in December, the Blue Devils committed 10 turnovers. The Yellow Jackets typically don’t force many turnovers — they turned over ACC teams 16.4% of the time, 10th in the league, per KenPom.

In Wednesday’s 66-60 win over Virginia, GT forced eight turnovers, which led to 12 points.

Matchup to watch: GT’s pick-and-rolls vs. Duke’s switching defense.

After 30-plus games, nobody has any secrets about how they’re going to play.

The Yellow Jackets are going to run ball screens in the middle of the court with Naithan George and Baye Ndongo. That’s a sophomore connection that might be one of the best in the ACC.

Duke is going to switch 1-through-5 defensively, as it has for most of the last three seasons. Jai Lucas’ departure from the coaching staff shouldn’t mean the Blue Devils abandon their defensive identity.

So, it’s going to put Duke’s centers — Maluach and Maliq Brown, possibly Patrick Ngongba II — into conflict. George is coming off a game of 13 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists against Virginia; he’s adept at coming off the ball-screen and reading defenses.

EvanMiya lineup note: 31 for, 7 against.

EvanMiya tracks a stat called the “kill shot,” which is defined as a run of 10 straight points or more.

Duke has the same number of kill shots as it has played games this season, 31 of each. That’s tied for the fourth-most in the country with SMU; the only teams with more are McNeese State, Iowa State and UC San Diego.

And Duke has only given up seven kill shots this season. That’s tied for the 18th fewest allowed in the country.

It’s part of what has made Duke such a difficult team to beat across the last three months. As simple as it sounds, you can win a lot of basketball games if you string together big runs and don’t give up any.

Yellow Jacket to watch: Forward Duncan Powell (No. 31).

Partially because George and Ndongo have been mentioned already — they’re GT’s best two players and each of them had a double-double against Virginia.

And partially because Powell is the hot-hand pick — based on one game, at least.

The junior went from 0-for-8 and scoreless at Wake Forest last weekend to 21 points on 9-for-14 shooting against Virginia. It’s the second time in the past month Powell has laid a clunker and followed it up with a big game; he had three points against Boston College and followed that with a career-best 26-point game against Pittsburgh.

Powell is an interesting 6-8, 235-pounder who GT can play at the 3- or 4-spot. He can hit 3s (43 of 124, 34.7%) but has missed his last eight. When he’s playing the 3-position, he creates mismatches against a lot of ACC teams that tend to operate with three-guard lineups — though, that’s not so much the case for Duke and Knueppel (6-7, 217).

Powell is on his third school in three years, having played his freshman season at North Carolina A&T and his sophomore season at Sacramento State.

Blue Devil to watch: Guard Caleb Foster (No. 1).

Welcome (back) to the party, pal.

Foster’s stat line — two points, one rebound, one assist, one block — from Saturday night doesn’t jump off the page.

Considering where he was, though, having not played in last week’s 33-point win against Wake Forest and his playing time dwindling over the past month, it was an impressive performance for the sophomore guard.

His coach’s comments about the performance were glowing, too.

“The majority of the time, if not all the time, guys can pout, quit, make an excuse,” Scheyer said. “I’m sure he’s pissed at me, that’s fine, that’s good. I’m all for that.

“But his attitude was … he just had such a competitiveness about him the last couple of days. And so, I thought as we got into the game, I thought we were missing what he had.”

Now we’ll get deeper into March and gauge how many more times this season Duke is missing what Foster has, and how early Scheyer goes to him off the bench.

KenPom prediction: Duke wins 83-61.

Injury report: All things should be good for the Blue Devils, given the return of Brown against UNC.

GT has been making things work, winning nine of its last 13 games. But the Yellow Jackets have also been without Javian McCollum for most of that stretch, as he suffered a concussion against Clemson on Feb. 4.

Kowacie Reeves Jr. only played in the first six games of the season, and GT has a couple of other players who would fill roles off the bench but are out for the season.

What a Duke loss looks like: In case you haven’t caught any of the early action in Charlotte … the rims are not the kindest you’ll see.

So, even more the case than if Duke and GT were playing in one of their buildings, the Blue Devils will have to have a horrific shooting game to lose this one. An advantage for the Yellow Jackets here is that they’re the less-reliant team on 3-point shooting — though, it’s not like Duke can’t score inside.

What a Duke win looks like: It probably won’t look like these teams’ December matchup — GT has improved since then.

And yet, the Yellow Jackets did lose by 26 to another Tobacco Road team less than a week ago.

As long as Duke’s switching, disruptive defense limits GT’s offense, this one should be pretty straightforward. The Blue Devils are too talented offensively — with too many ways to score — to worry about unfriendly rims.

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