Next up for Duke is Louisville and the timing couldn’t be worse: on Tuesday afternoon Louisville’s appeal to the NCAA was rejected and the Cardinals lose 123 victories including the 2013 national championship which is now vacant.
Duke is likely to find a motivated bunch of Cardinals. Louisville is an okay 18-9 overall and 8-6 in the ACC but this team is better than its record. It’s just been a bizarre and tough year for the players. It started when the Adidas/FBI scandal broke. Then Rick Pitino was forced out followed by Louisville’s athletic director Tom Jurich.
David Padgett was named interim coach and for a time he was running the show entirely by himself sans assistants.