Duke Basketball's Darkest Moments of the Decade: No's 1 and 2

The two darkest Duke basketball moments of the decade are a pair of embarrassing first-round NCAA Tournament losses.

2. Jabari Parker and Rodney Hood led Duke to the 2013-14 tournament as a three seed, at 26-8. The Blue Devils got to stay close to home, playing the first weekend at PNC Arena in Raleigh.

Duke drew 14-seed Mercer, champion of the Atlantic Sun Conference. That was the same conference that produced Florida Gulf Coast, who had a big run to the Sweet 16 a year before.

The Bears kept the Atlantic Sun’s Cinderella reputation intact, shutting Duke down. The Blue Devils shot 35 percent in each half and were actually worse from two point range. They hit just 7 of 25 shots from two and turned it over 12 times. Parker and Hood combined for just 20 points on 6 of 24 shooting, and Mercer pulled off the big upset.

1. Mercer’s win was history repeating itself from two years earlier. Led by Austin Rivers, Duke was the No. 2 seed in 2012 and played in Greensboro for the first weekend.

As Duke prepared to take the court, another two-seed—Missouri—was losing to 15-seed Norfolk State in another region. The Blue Devils either didn’t heed the warning or couldn’t do anything about it.

The two heroes of that game were CJ McCollum, who Duke simply couldn’t stop. There was no answer for his drives to the hoop as he scored 30 points against the Blue Devils. The second hero was Lehigh coach Brett Reed, who was intense and confident from the time the team arrived in Greensboro. He had his players convinced that they would win the game, and to this day, most members of the team refuse to call the result an upset, since they expected to win all along.