No. 9 Duke basketball faces challenging ACC stretch. Are Blue Devils tough enough?

Duke basketball keeps grinding out wins, racking them up at a high enough clip to be ranked among the nation’s top 10 teams and near the top of the ACC standings.

With March drawing tantalizingly close, though, the No. 9 Blue Devils (18-5, 9-3 ACC) know they still need to find an even higher gear.

“I think we’re closer for sure,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said Saturday, after the Blue Devils beat Boston College 80-65 at Cameron Indoor Stadium. “But it’s not like we’re a final product.”

While 13 wins in their last 15 games are certainly impressive, collecting wins against fellow NCAA Tournament-bound teams requires strong play all over the court.

Duke will learn whether it has the stuff to accomplish that over the next three weeks, beginning Monday night.

Wake Forest (16-7, 8-4 ACC) comes to Cameron Indoor Stadium firmly in the NCAA Tournament conversation, having aligned itself for the program’s first trip to the tournament since 2017.

Duke’s eight remaining ACC regular-season games include home and road games with the Demon Deacons as well as home games with Virginia (19-5, 10-3 ACC) and North Carolina (19-5, 11-2 ACC).

Bart Torvik’s NCAA bracket projections on Saturday foresee Duke and those three teams as in the NCAA tournament field come March. His site also has the ACC’s Clemson in the field of 68.

Duke edged the Tigers 72-71, last month but lost 93-84 at rival North Carolina on Feb. 3.

Duke has victories over other tournament-worthy teams this season, having defeated Michigan State and Baylor on neutral courts in November and December. Duke’s 80-56 win over Charlotte on Dec. 9 is looking pretty good now since the 49ers (14-8, 8-2 American Athletic Conference) are tied for second place in their league.

Getting to the NCAA Tournament is the rock-bottom expectation for Duke, of course. The Blue Devils also need to be equipped to do well there.

Last season’s 27-9 Blue Devils won the ACC championship, but Tennessee whipped them, 65-52, in the NCAA Tournament’s second round.

In the offseason, Duke players and coaches vowed to take that loss to heart. They aimed to be better prepared for that kind of physical battle against a veteran team, the kind of teams that await them in the NCAA Tournament.

As noted, plenty of those kind of teams also lie ahead for the rest of the ACC regular season and in the league tournament in Washington, D.C., next month.

So it’s time to see if Duke has the toughness, the killer instinct.

“I think we’ve really got to throw ourselves all in together,” Duke sophomore center Kyle Filipowski said. “You know, play for one another. I think that really brings out the killer instinct. I think we’ve shown plenty of flashes throughout the year.”

Even while Duke has won plenty over the last two months, Scheyer’s seen things that concern him. The Blue Devils haven’t been strong in the final stretches of first halves, particularly lately.

During a Friday practice, two days after beating Notre Dame and the day before playing Boston College, Scheyer put four minutes on the scoreboard clock and had the team scrimmage like it was the end of the half.

“All right,” he told the team, “we have to win.”

The starters did that, and on Saturday after Boston College took a 28-27 lead, Duke scored seven points in a row on two Sean Stewart baskets and a Caleb Foster 3-pointer to lead 34-28 with 1:54 left until halftime.

The Blue Devils never trailed again.

“The guys won the segment yesterday,” Scheyer said. “I thought they had great carryover today in that situation. I thought that was a big step for us to close the first half that way.”

Now Duke needs to do it against the better teams. The Blue Devils have beaten some of them. They’ve also suffered losses to Arkansas (11-11), Georgia Tech (10-14) and Pittsburgh (15-8), three teams with little to no NCAA Tournament chances.

“It’s not like with this team you worry about who you play,” Scheyer said. “We can lose to anybody. I think we can beat everybody. The main thing is growing every day, and there’s no question these guys have had amazing attitudes and have done that.”