catmandoo
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Member # 1284
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posted 03-17-2021 03:50 PM
Two NCAA tournament stalwarts will be missing from the Big Dance this year.
For the first time since 1976, neither Duke nor Kentucky is part of the tournament. That's a whopping 45 years. For context, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne founded Apple and released the first Apple computer in 1976. That's how long it has been.
The 2020-21 seasons for the Blue Devils and Wildcats were forgettable for both. Duke went 13-11 and had only one win against a ranked opponent, and Kentucky put up one of the SEC's worst overall marks with a 9-16 record.
It will certainly be a weird tournament without these two powerhouse teams. According to the ESPN Stats & Information Group, no teams won more NCAA tournament games in the 2010s than Kentucky (31) and Duke (26).
Let's take a look at some other stats that put this rare occurrence in perspective:
Kentucky's season might be one of the most disappointing in college basketball history when accounting for the preseason. The Wildcats were ranked 10th in the AP Top 25 poll before the season started, but they finished with the worst winning percentage (.360) of any AP top-10 team since the poll debuted ahead of the 1961-62 season.
Duke's final record was less disastrous than Kentucky's, but the program still hit a number of lows not seen in years. Their 13-11 record is the program's worst since the Blue Devils last missed the NCAA tournament in the 1994-95 season. Duke also lost nine ACC games and multiple nonconference home games in a season for the first time since 1982-83.
For the first season since 2012-13, the Blue Devils didn't have a single freshman average at least 15 points per game. They scored just 930 points in 2,392 minutes, their worst ratio since 2012-13. For the Wildcats, most of their trouble came at the rim, too. Kentucky posted its fewest points per game in nearly 15 years and its lowest field goal percentage in nearly 60 years.
Both teams also struggled against highly ranked teams. The Blue Devils went 2-5 against teams in Quadrant 1 -- games at home against a team ranked in the top 30. The Wildcats went 3-11 against teams in the top 30.
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[ 03-17-2021, 03:52 PM: Message edited by: catmandoo ]
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