Duke Closes Gap on Auburn in ESPN's Power Rankings

The No. 1 Auburn Tigers (26-2) and No. 2 Duke Blue Devils (25-3) seem to be joined at the hip in more ways than one this year.

Auburn's Johni Broome and Duke's Cooper Flagg are the runaway favorites to win player of the year honors at the end of the season, and their teams are battling it out of the No. 1 overall seed.

Duke has claim to a head to head victory over the Tigers in December, but the home court victory over Auburn hasn't been enough to sway voters into putting them into the No. 1 spot their polls.

Auburn saw the rare instance of losing a game and maintaining the No. 1 spot when they lost at home to Florida 90-81 on February 8th. Duke missed their chance to claim the top spot by falling to Clemson the same day.

The Tigers beat the Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday in a hard-fought contest. The unranked Bulldogs showed what a tenacious opponent they can be by beating the No. 3 Florida Gators the next time out.

That loss by the Gators coupled with a dominant 97-60 win by the Blue Devils over Miami was enough for ESPN's Jeff Borzello to elevate Duke to the No. 2 spot in his power rankings released Thursday morning.

"Duke had one of the most dominant performances of the season on Saturday, beating Illinois by 43 points at Madison Square Garden, then followed that up with a 37-point road win at Miami on Tuesday," wrote Borzello on ESPN.

"But there's concern over starting guard Tyrese Proctor, who left Tuesday's game with a knee injury. Jon Scheyer said Wednesday that Proctor has a bone bruise, but there isn't an exact timetable moving forward."

Two conference wins by a combined 80 points are more than enough to get the attention of voters and pundits, but Auburn responded on Wednesday, blowing out Ole Miss who was ranked last week.

"Auburn answered Duke's obliteration of Illinois at Madison Square Garden with its own dominant performance, posting its best offensive showing of the season in Wednesday's 30-point win over Ole Miss," wrote Borzello on keeping Auburn in the No. 1 spot.

"The Tigers scored 1.49 points per possession, their best offensive performance in KenPom's database that dates back to the 1996-97 season. They shot 64% inside the arc and made 11 shots from deep at a 52.4% clip from 3 while also getting to the free throw line 33 times."

Auburn not only hit 59.6% from the field on Wednesday night, they claimed 10 offensive rebounds on only 23 missed shots. That's how a team gets its best points per possession in at least 30 years.

While the NCAA Tournament isn't quite a crap shoot, it does take a considerable amount of luck along with talent and depth to win six games in three weekends. Auburn and Duke have all but guaranteed that they'll sweep player of the year and the No. 1 overall seed.

However, despite the lofty rankings in February, both of these teams will ultimately be judged by how they perform in March. And once they tip off March Madness, rankings won't matter.