This year’s Duke basketball team was ranked as the top team early in the season and carried that rank into the NCAA tournament. However, the Blue Devils faltered throughout March Madness and ended up bowing out to Michigan State in the national quarterfinals. Was the 2018-19 Duke team really deserving of the “best Duke team” and “could beat the Cavaliers” label?

Let’s compare Duke’s regular season to that of the national champions over the past ten years (with two of those being the 2010 and 2015 Duke teams).

Five out of the ten had all these characteristics going into the tournament, and the only teams not to have four or greater were the 2010-11 and 2013-14 Connecticut championship teams. In addition, 2011-12 Kentucky’s senior guard Darius Miles averaged 9.9 points, nearly completing the perfect 10-of-10 for that aspect of the chart. In addition, 2018-19 Duke had by far the lowest 3 point percentage rank, entering the tournament at 329th, while none of the ten champions were outside of the top 300 and six of them inside the top 50 (with 2018-19 Virginia as #1 and 2017-18 Villanova as #2).

Against these characteristics, this year’s Duke team only stacked up to recent champions in terms of SRS (simple rating system, which takes into account strength of schedule and average point differential). A high relative SRS indicates that Duke was a talented, winning team, but a poor performance in March Madness may be attributed to a lack of overall experience, lesser offensive efficiency, and higher turnovers.

Coach Krzyzewski has headed many memorable Blue Devil squads, but some experts touted this as the best yet. We can compare these metrics for the last three championship Duke teams that have reached the national finals under Coach K, to gauge the ability of this year’s edition.

The Duke teams fill all the metrics listed above, save for the 2000-01 Blue Devil’s need for an upperclassman guard in double figures (although senior forward Shane Battier averaged nearly 20 ppg).

We can also compare the SRS against the nine Blue Devil teams Kryzyzewski has taken to the finals.

Although this year’s Duke team had a high relative SRS, it was not exceptional compared to the other finals-qualifying squads, ranking third out of 10, and a point over the average of 25.69.

Overall, the 2018-19 Duke Blue Devils had a strong regular season team, finishing as ACC Champions and seeing the breakout of likely number one overall NBA draft pick Zion Williamson. However, they did not show signs of a “championship” team, like Virginia did. Their flaws, from high turnovers to poor shooting percentages, doomed them in the tournament, as they snuck past close games against UCF and Virginia Tech before falling to Michigan State in the regional finals.