Duke Blue Devils vs. Louisville Cardinals College Basketball prediction, preview
Duke enters one of the biggest games of the ACC schedule on Tuesday on a bit of a slump. The Blue Devils took their first loss of the season in late December in a neutral game to Texas Tech at Madison Square Garden. After building a 16-point lead, Duke let it get away from them and haven’t played well since.
In their first two ACC games, the Blue Devils beat Georgia Tech by six as a 27-point home favorite and then FSU by four as a 16-point road favorite. Duke is now just 1-7 ATS in its last eight games, although it does have wins over Arkansas, Florida and Michigan State. I put some weight on the win against Sparty, as it was a comparable true road game to this one against the Cardinals.
That said, I don’t see this as a great spot for the home team. It is a bounce-back game for Louisville, which just lost as a 7.5-point road favorite at Stanford, but this team is off a long west coast road trip. The Cards played road games at Cal and Stanford, and were out west for nearly a week over the holidays. Now they return home and have no time to settle in, jumping right to their regular season Super Bowl, hosting the best team in the conference.
On top of that, Louisville will be missing one of its top scorers in Mikel Brown Jr. The freshman has been out for a few games, and his team really missed his 16.6 points per game and 5.1 assists in a loss to Tennessee. Louisville is a perfect 8-0 at home, including a win over Kentucky, but this will be the toughest test.
This will be a rowdy crowd, but nothing that Duke hasn’t already seen at Michigan State. I see this as the spot that Duke wakes up, and potentially catches the Cards in a tough spot after all the travel. Give me the better team to earn the road win here. If Duke struggles early, you can also look at playing the Blue Devils in-game, as they’ve been a tremendous second half team this season.
