Cooper Flagg and the Duke Blue Devils won their ninth straight game on Tuesday night, manhandling a 12-2 Pittsburgh Panthers team for a 76-47 victory, and the ESPN Basketball Power Index can deny the truth no longer.
This is the best college basketball team in the country.
Flagg and his teammates moved past the Auburn Tigers for the No. 1 spot in the BPI rankings as of Wednesday morning, mirroring their rise to the summit of the KenPom rankings.
Thanks to an offense averaging 83.8 points per game over its last four appearances and a defense that has only let three teams score more than 65 points all season, the Blue Devils excel in both the offensive and defensive power indexes. Duke’s 12.2 offensive rating trails only Auburn’s 13.7, and the Blue Devils rank third on the defensive side with an 11.6 index.
No other team resides within the top five on both ends of the court.
Duke certainly doesn’t lack the star power to win a national title, either. Flagg finished with 19 points and 10 rebounds against the Panthers despite some first-half foul trouble, and fellow freshman Kon Knueppel made four 3-pointers to finish with 17 points of his own.
With no other ACC team within the top 20 of the BPI rankings, ESPN projects Duke to win 27.5 games this season. That’s 1.5 forecasted losses over the Blue Devils’ final 16 outings even with a February showdown against the Illinois Fighting Illini on deck.
