DURHAM, N.C. -- Tyus Jones, the fourth-year point guard for the Minnesota Timberwolves who won a national title with Duke in 2015, can identify with the hype and expectations that are heaped on this year's Duke team, which features his little brother, Tre Jones, at point guard.

The hyper-talented roster that could set NBA Draft records. The early-season predictions that the team could go 40-0. The absurd notions that this collegiate team could go out and beat the bottom-of-the-barrel NBA teams. The pressure heading into the NCAA Tournament, when this team is, bar-none, the story of college basketball. What Tre is experiencing right now is exactly what Tyus saw during his one-and-done college season in 2014-15.

Except where Tyus saw it wasn't with his Duke team. It was with the fellow blue blood college team that's based 500 miles northwest of Durham: The Kentucky Wildcats.

That year, Kentucky made it all the way to the Final Four before losing a game, to Frank Kaminsky and the Wisconsin Badgers. Then Tyus, the most outstanding player of the NCAA Tournament and the connective tissue for that Duke team, scored 23 points in the title game and led Duke to its fifth national title.

The parallels between Tyus' Duke team and this year's squad go deeper than just the five letters on the back of the starting point guard's jersey: "JONES." Both are freshmen-dominated groups; the 2014-15 team marked Coach K's fullest buy-in yet to college basketball's one-and-done culture, whereas this year's team -- with three freshmen who NBA scouts believe will go in the top five of the 2019 NBA Draft, and Jones, who projects as a certain first-rounder if he leaves after this season -- represents a team that's even more freshman-reliant. 

Both teams suffered through soul-searching moments during ACC play; in 2015, that came when Duke's defense looked in shambles during back-to-back losses to North Carolina State and Miami, and this year, that has come over the past month, as Duke has stumbled to find its identity after Zion Williamson's injury left the team without its single star. Like the 2015 team, a Jones brother serves as the connective tissue, and may be the single most important factor -- Zion's health excluded -- in determining whether Duke raises another banner. For the 2014-15 team, Jones and Jahlil Okafor were considered package-deal recruits who then added Justise Winslow to their group. For this team, Jones and Cam Reddish had a handshake agreement that they would attend college together, and then -- over a period of months, in a text string that lasts to this day -- they recruited Williamson and R.J. Barrett to join them in Durham.

"There's a lot of people expecting you to win every single game," Tre Jones told CBSSports.com. "But growing up behind Tyus, there's always been an expectation of doing exactly what he did, because he's been sensational at basketball. Ever since I was a young kid, it's helped me play with a chip on my shoulder, and want it even more. It's something I'm used to now. I've never been around something where there wasn't that expectation of living up to my brother. With everything I've done as far as basketball goes, it's been compared to my brother. He came before me."

Even though Tyus played for Duke before his younger brother, it was actually Tre who became a Duke fan first. When they were growing up in a Minneapolis suburb -- best of friends, as they still are today -- basketball was always on the television. Tre found himself drawn to Duke, the team that always had those expectations on its head, the team that people loved or hated. He might have been even more excited than his older brother when Tyus committed to play for Coach K. It was Tre, not Tyus, whose childhood bedroom was covered with Duke posters.

In 2015, Tre was in the stands with his mother for every Duke game during the NCAA Tournament: When No. 1 seed Duke smoked Robert Morris and San Diego State in Charlotte, then Duke eked out a win over Utah in the Sweet Sixteen and then beat Gonzaga in the Elite Eight in Houston, before the Blue Devils blew out Michigan State and outlasted Wisconsin in Indianapolis to cut down the nets.

It's only natural that the brothers will get compared to each other as much as their Duke teams do. They're both high-IQ point guards who make up for their physical deficiencies by being the smartest players on the court. They're both natural leaders. While Tyus is the knockdown shooter -- his propensity to hit the big shot in the big moment in college gained him the nickname "Tyus Stones" -- Tre is the ball hawk of a defender, capable of locking down an opponent on the perimeter for the entire game.

There's certainly a rivalry between the two. Tyus' Duke team already has the title in the bag, whereas Tre's team is trying for it right now. Tyus was in the stands for Tre's first Duke game. Want more spooky parallels? That game was against Kentucky, and it was played at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis -- the same place where Tyus' Duke team had cut down the nets.

"I was more anxious," Tyus Jones told CBSSports.com. "I was really excited to see him get out there with 'DUKE' across his chest, 'JONES' on his back. That's my little brother. That's my right-hand man. And he's worked so hard and wanted this for a long time. To see it come true and actually be there for it, just sit back and watch, it was a crazy emotional night for me and my family. Then you throw in the team they have, and they're playing Kentucky, and you walk in and it's a sold-out crowd. Everything on top of it built it up into being something crazy."

The morning after that blowout, Duke went from a really talented young basketball team to the talk of sports that could go 40-0 and beat the Cleveland Cavaliers. For a while, the hype around this team rivaled the hype that built around the 2014-15 Kentucky team as it attempted to go undefeated.

A bit of the air has been gradually let out of the Duke hype balloon as this season has progressed. The close loss to Gonzaga in November. The overtime home loss to Syracuse in January, where Tre separated his shoulder in the first half. And, of course, Zion's knee injury in the first UNC game in February; that led Duke on a slide where they lost three of their next six teams. What Tyus believes is that the stumbles along the way will bring those sky-high expectations back to reality, and make this Duke team stronger in the long run: "That helped refocus and regroup them: 'We're not invincible.'"

There is no destiny in sports. But it sure is fun to look for signs of destiny on the path to greatness. And tell me if this isn't a nifty piece of foreshadowing: This year's Final Four will be played in Minneapolis, the same city where the Jones brothers began their rise. Tyus' NBA team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, has home games sandwiched around the Final Four games: A Timberwolves game on Friday, which will be followed by the national semifinals on Saturday. A Timberwolves game on Sunday, which will be followed by the national title game on Monday.

If Tre's Duke team is among those last four teams standings, Tyus plans to be in the stands alongside his mother, just like his little brother was four years ago.