Ranking Duke’s worst NCAA tournament losses since its last title, including that collapse vs. UConn
Duke’s March Madness run came to an end on Sunday at the Elite Eight, and what an ending it was. The Blue Devils blew a 15-point halftime lead, coughed up the ball in the final seconds and watched UConn’s Braylon Mullins knock them out of the NCAA Tournament.
It was a painful loss, but she has company in Duke’s oeuvre of embarrassing March Madness outings. This is a very proud program that has seen some of the best NBA prospects of the last decade come through its doors, without a title to show for it since they won it all in 2015 under Mike Krzyzewski.
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You can’t do that without a few games that make you want to crawl through a hole in the ground.
Here’s a list of the Blue Devils’ worst NCAA tournament losses over the past 11 years without a title. It should be noted that the Blue Devils did not participate in the tournament in 2021 when they were 13-11 and had no tournaments to participate in for 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Three of his losses (2016, 2018, 2023) were also to lower seeds and therefore were not included.
6. No. 2 Duke vs. No. 7 South Carolina, 2017 second round
Top scorers: Jayson Tatum, Luke Kennard
Tatum, Kennard and Grayson Allen went on to have successful NBA careers, but their time together in college was less than ideal.
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Duke was ranked No. 1 in the preseason AP poll with Allen as the national player of the year and Tatum and Harry Giles looming as the program’s next big freshmen. Mike Krzyzewski’s best Duke teams combined NBA lottery-bound freshmen and veteran leaders, and this one definitely fit the bill.
So it was curious that this team didn’t really get going until Kennard, a five-star recruit in his sophomore year, became the team’s premier offensive option and became an All-American. This overhaul seemed to save Duke’s season, until it fell apart against a South Carolina team ready for everything it had.
Duke just couldn’t stop the Gamecocks’ Sindarius Thornwell in the second half, and an entire season of dysfunction came flooding back.
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5. No. 4 Duke vs. No. 11 NC State, Elite Eight 2024
Top scorers: Kyle Filipowski, Jared McCain
From an NBA perspective, this is probably the least talented Duke team on this list. The No. 4 seed Blue Devils looked good, but not great, in their second year under Scheyer, but knocked off No. 1 Houston in the Sweet 16 to set up what appeared to be an extremely favorable matchup to reach the Final Four.
NC State reached the tournament solely on the strength of an unprecedented ACC tournament run, which included a win over Duke. A repeat win for the overachieving Wolfpack was a tall order, right?
RIGHT?
Duke has seen better teams lose in the tournament, but there have only been a few times where a loss like that hit so close to home, against a local foe they don’t even call their biggest rival.
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4. No. 1 Duke vs. No. 2 UConn, 2026 Elite Eight
Top scorers: Cameron Boozer, Isaiah Evans
The No. 1 overall seed was at least gracious enough to warn us that this March Madness race might not go as hoped. They needed comebacks to beat No. 16 seed Siena and No. 5 seed St. John’s, the former becoming the first No. 16 seed to hold a double-digit halftime lead over a No. 1 seed.
But Duke didn’t need a comeback to beat UConn. You just had to hold on. Duke led by 19 points in the first half, but Dan Hurley’s group kept chipping away. Even then, Duke only had to hold on to the ball with 10 seconds left, instead of… this.
It was a mortifying collapse. But it’s also not Duke’s most mortifying collapse in the last two years.
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3. No. 1 Duke vs. No. 2 Michigan State, 2019 Elite Eight
Top scorers: Zion Williamson, RJ Barrett
Williamson’s NBA career has been more eventful than expected, but we can’t forget how much of a splash he was in his only year with Duke, or how he was only their third-best freshman in some recruiting rankings.
Williamson, Barrett and Cam Reddish gave Duke the top three recruits in the country and they absolutely lived up to the hype (overall). This team seemed almost inevitable, and then No. 2 seed Michigan State showed it was no slouch either. In one of Tom Izzo’s best coaching jobs, the Spartans withstood some inhumane attacks from Williamson to beat the tournament’s top seed.
In terms of missed opportunities, this team might be at the top of this list. At least last year, Cooper Flagg and Co.’s team, which we might describe as equally talented, reached the Final Four.
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2. No. 1 Duke vs. No. 1 Houston, Final Four 2025
Top scorers: Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel
The best that can be said of last year’s loss is that it was a quality match, for a #1 seed, and required a very questionable call from the officials.
The rest, well, let’s remember how Duke led by as many as 14 in that game, the fifth-largest lost lead in Final Four historyand at nine o’clock with less than three minutes to play. Flagg appeared to throw several daggers, but Houston continued to hang around as the Blue Devils’ offense went absolutely limp, with just one basket in the final 10 minutes.
Duke entered the Final Four as a favorite to win it all and just needed some semblance of offense from a team with three projected lottery picks, one of them perhaps America’s best prospect since Anthony Davis or LeBron James, to reach the championship game against Florida.
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Instead, he suffered what would be the worst loss ever for most programs. But not Duke.
1. No. 2 Duke vs. No. 8 UNC, Final Four 2022
Top scorers: Paolo Banchero, Wendell Moore Jr.
Let’s be real: Duke could have blown a 50-point lead on Sunday and it wouldn’t have been No. 1 on this list.
There’s no redemption facing your biggest rival – the biggest rivalry in all of college basketball – for the first time in the NCAA Tournament, in the Final Four, in your legendary coach’s final game, and losing to a No. 8 seed on a complete YOLO run, with Caleb Love providing the dagger.
It doesn’t matter what Duke does from here on out and how many rings Jon Scheyer or his successor end up winning. For the rest of our lives, any Duke fan publicly remembering the great Coach K will have to look over their shoulder, just to make sure there isn’t a smiling UNC fan about to remind them how it all ended.
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There is nothing better.
