Duke v. North Carolina. An ouch moment

With the Pittsbugh Steelers’ Super Bowl victory now in the past, my attention turns to my next beloved sport, basketball. Yesterday, my two favorite teams lost. Duke lost to North Carolina. The Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Utah Jazz. Now the Lakers loss isn’t that bad. They’d won 7 straight. They beat Boston and Cleveland. Utah was the second game of a back to back. They were on the road. The only issue with the Lakers is that hopefully Bynum can come back before the play-offs starts. Now onto the Duke Blue Devils.

I hate to write this question: Is Duke any good this year? The top four teams in the ACC are Clemson, Duke, North Carolina and Wake Forest. Duke hasn’t beaten any of the top ACC teams. Two of these teams blew them out of the water. Okay, because I’m on the West Coast I don’t get to watch all the games (yes, if I was a TRUE fan, I'd TIVO the games and watch them later), but I can “watch” some of the games from work via the Internet. The Clemson game I didn’t get to see much of either over the Internet or on television, but I think the score speaks for itself: that was just pathetic. I did get to watch the last 10 minutes or so of the North Carolina game on ESPN. Duke was just over-matched. That is just my opinion, of course, and I’m admittedly just a arm chair expert in these matters. My next question is should Duke even rank in the top 20? If you can’t beat the best teams in your conference perhaps you shouldn’t be considered a top 20 team. Now there is still time for Duke to turn it around. They play both Wake Forest and North Carolina one more time and perhaps they’ll win those games. Maybe they’ll get some revenge against Clemson in the ACC Conference Tournament. Maybe I’m over-exaggerating the situation, but to me the situation looks dire. Even that vaunted Duke defense seems weak at the moment. To me, it is starting to look like another early exit out of March Madness. Sorry to say that. Now does that make me feel less inclined to cheer for Duke? No, I’m a Duke fan, but at the moment I don’t think a deep run into March is very likely.