Syracuse vs. Duke

On a night made up mostly of one-bid leagues, the ESPN doubleheader features the ACC and Big 12. The first of the two games on the World Wide Leader is Syracuse vs. Duke, as the Blue Devils lay a healthy number at home in search of their 13th conference win out of 14 games. Syracuse has lost more ACC games than they’ve won and they’re 0-6 in Quadrant 1-A games, so if they want any chance of a miraculous run to a Big Dance berth, this amounts to a must-win game at very long odds.

For bettors backing the underdog, though, they’re just interested in seeing if the Orange can cover the spread with a head start of more than 19 points. For Duke, this could be a touch of a lookahead spot with a mammoth neutral-site matchup at Capital One Arena in Washington D.C. against Michigan on Saturday. As things stand per BracketMatrix, Duke is one of three universal No. 1 seeds, with Michigan and Arizona as the others.

This preview focuses solely on this game, but we’ve got daily best bets from Greg Peterson, as well as his daily spread and total projections, picks six days a week from Adam Burke, and men’s and women’s college basketball projections five days a week from Tyler Shoemaker, the proprietor of the T Shoe Index.

This season, we’ve also connected with CBBAnalytics.com to access their data and I’ll be working that into my article. Use promo code VSIN30 for $30 off at CBB Analytics and find your betting edge.

Odds from DraftKings Sportsbook as of February 15, 4:45 pm PT; check out our Circa Betting Splits and DraftKings Betting Splits.

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Syracuse vs. Duke (-19.5, 143.5)

7 p.m. ET (ESPN)

Sometimes getting knocked down a peg can help. Just ask the Blue Devils, who lost to hated rival North Carolina back on Feb. 7. In two games since, Duke has wins by 16 and 13 points, allowing just .881 and .872 points per possession. They failed to cover the spread against Pitt in their 70-54 win, but did narrowly cover against Clemson last time out.

Duke is playing very slowly these days. The most possessions that they’ve had in a game since early January is 65, which they’ve done three times. In their last two victories, they’ve only played to 61 and 62 possessions. The fewer the number of possessions, the more efficiency required on both ends of the floor to cover these sorts of numbers.

Syracuse has won a couple in a row after losing six of seven. The Orange outlasted Cal 107-100 in double overtime this past Wednesday and squeaked past SMU by a point on Saturday. While Duke has been suffocating on defense, Syracuse has not allowed under a point per possession since Jan. 6 against Georgia Tech.

Syracuse’s win over Tennessee back on Dec. 2 feels like an eternity ago. It is their only Quadrant 1 win, and their other six such games by 4, 11, 31, 20, 10, and 13. In the 18-team conference, the Orange are ninth in adjusted offensive efficiency and 12th in adjusted defensive efficiency per Bart Torvik, while Duke is fourth and second, respectively. The Blue Devils are also second in eFG% offense and fourth in eFG% defense. To Syracuse’s credit, they are actually sixth in both eFG% offense and defense. They have struggled at the free throw line and in the turnover department, but they’ve been a decent team when it comes to making and preventing shots.

Along with the slower tempo, could we start to see a little bit of “load management” from Jon Scheyer in the way that he distributes playing time? Double-double machine Cameron Boozer has averaged 22.8 PPG and 9.9 RPG while playing 82.7% of the available minutes per Torvik. Nobody else for Duke has played over 70% of the available minutes, so maybe we’ll start to see Boozer’s playing time cut down slightly to keep him fresh. Patrick Ngongba did not play the Feb. 10 game against Pitt and played just 19 minutes against Clemson on Saturday. Ngongba (10.5 PPG) and Isaiah Evans (14.4 PPG) are the other top scorers with a lot of the playing time spread across the rest of the roster.

Four Orangemen have averaged double digits, led by Donnie Freeman with 17.6 PPG. J.J. Starling (12.1), Nate Kingz (11.7), and Naithan George (10.5) are others. Freeman missed a good chunk of the early part of the season, but he played every game since Dec. 31 and has had 15+ points in all but three of them. Starling only played 19 minutes and had just four points in Saturday’s win. 

Syracuse vs. Duke Prediction

Syracuse doesn’t really have an identity, as they’ve played to a variety of different paces and tempos this season. That leads me to believe that they’ll likely play to whatever pace Duke wants and that’s a slow one right now. The Cameron Crazies may not be as crazy here in a game where their team is favored by 19.5 and I could really see Cam Boozer, who played 37 minutes on Saturday, have a lighter workload here.

Pick: Syracuse +19.5

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