Duke’s domination a far cry from UCONN’s record setting NCAA Tournament 

The NCAA Tournament is back in the spotlight tonight as all eyes shift on the Sweet 16. There are no Cinderella’s left, and all four top seeds are still alive, but no team looked more dominant than the Duke Blue Devils through the first two rounds.

Duke rolls to Sweet 16

They aren’t just the one seed in the East regional. They aren’t just the ACC Tournament champions, and they don’t just have the best player in the country. Duke is currently on pace to have the most lopsided NCAA Tournament run in history ever.

Having said that, there are a lot of games left and one game could end all that, but so far so good for the Blue Devils who breezed past the first weekend of the Big Dance while barely breaking a sweat. They smashed 16 seed Mount St. Mary’s 93-49 in their tourney opener, and they rolled over nine seed Baylor, 89-66.

Their combined margin of victory through just two games is 77, for an average of 38.5 a game. While their “easiest” games are behind them, this looks like a team that is rolling into the Sweet 16, but their toughest tests still lie ahead.

UCONN’s record in jeopardy?

They play the four seeded University of Arizona on Thursday night, and the lowest seed they could play before the tittle game is the sixth seeded BYU Cougars in the Elite Eight. Obviously the deeper you go in the tournament, the higher seeds you are likely to play, but at the moment Duke is on pace to shatter UCONN’s record breaking title run last year.

In their second of two straight National Championships, the UCONN Huskies blew the competition away setting a new NCAA Tournament record for total margin of victory. Over the course of six games, the Huskies beat their opponents by a total of 140 points. As the one seed, they beat 16 seeded Stetson 91-52 and Northwestern 75-58 for a total margin of victory of 56 points through the first weekend.

Then the Huskies went on to beat five seed San Diego State by 30 in the Sweet 16, three seed Illinois by 25 in the Elite Eight, Alabama by 14 in the Final Four and Purdue by 15 in the title game. UCONN never trailed in the second half of any of those games, and went back-to-back beating their opponents by an average of 23.3 points a game.

Like we talked about earlier, Duke has a long way to go before they even sniff the conversation of greatest tournament team ever. If they were to break the record they would need to win out, and win their remaining games by an average of 16 points.

They will be much more interested in bringing the National Championship back to Cameroon Indoor Stadium for the first time in a decade. They are four games away, but need to be focused on getting past Arizona on Thursday night.

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