The championship game of the 2017 NCAA Tournament will be played exactly 14 weeks from tonight, inside a dome built for a football team down in Arizona. Whether Duke will be involved, as the Blue Devils have forever been projected to be, remains undetermined. But know this: If Mike Krzyzewski's team gets there, and then wins it, they'll have overcome as much adversity as any national champion in recent history.
And perhaps ever.
Seriously, what hasn't gone wrong for Duke this season?
It started with Harry Giles recovering slowly from last year's ACL surgery before needing another knee surgery that sidelined the five-star freshman for Duke's first 11 games. And the 6-foot-10 forward has been a total non-factor since joining the Blue Devils. He's 12th on the roster in scoring and averaging just 7.7 minutes per game.
Meantime, fellow five-star freshmen Jayson Tatum and Marques Bolden each also started the season in street clothes. Both missed Duke's first eight games. And though Tatum has looked really good since joining the rotation, Bolden has not. In fact, Bolden isn't even really in the rotation. The 6-11 center is only averaging 6.5 minutes per game. He played just three minutes in Saturday's 89-75 loss at Virginia Tech.
Meantime, CBS Sports Preseason National Player of the Year Grayson Allen is indefinitely suspended. He has a tripping problem. And now, on top of all that, Krzyzewski is having back surgery Friday that'll sideline him for an estimated four weeks, meaning Duke is about to play at least seven games without its iconic coach.
Add it up, and here's the deal: Duke's three most heralded freshmen have all missed games, and two of them have made no impact on the team to date. And Duke's leading returning scorer is sidelined for a still-to-be-determined amount of time. And Duke's Hall of Fame coach will miss roughly 25 percent of the regular season.
Have we ever seen anything like this?
Do you remember a preseason No. 1 ever enduring as much?
All things considered, it's impressive and a testament to the talent elsewhere on the roster -- specifically Luke Kennard and Amile Jefferson -- that Duke is 12-2 and still ranked in the top 10. Because I really don't think any other team in the country could be without its leading returning scorer, while getting nothing from two of its top three recruits, and still be 12-2 and in the top 10 in the first week of January.
So that's the good news -- that things could be much worse.
Duke could be 10-4 and unranked.
So 12-2 and No. 8 is OK.
Either way, trust this: Duke will not finish this season doing what it planned -- i.e., cutting nets on the first Monday night in April -- unless a lot of stuff changes. I don't think Allen, Giles and Bolden all have to eventually play to preseason expectations, but at least two of them probably do. Because Villanova has already shown it's more than capable of repeating as national champions. And UCLA looks the part. So does Kentucky. And Kansas. And it would be foolish to completely disregard what Baylor and West Virginia did in November and December.
There are lots of possible national champions.
More than usual, it feels like.
Bottom line, yes, Duke is still the favorite to win the 2017 NCAA Tournament, according to oddsmakers. But the gap between the Blue Devils and everybody else isn't as wide as some projected, and it probably doesn't exist at all. And now Duke is without its top returning player. And, come Friday, it'll also be without college basketball's all-time winningest coach. If anybody can overcome those things to win a championship, these Blue Devils are probably the team. But that they have to overcome those things is this season's wildest story for sure.
