Duke's Scoring Margin Tops Every Championship Season

After capping off a 5-0 stretch that included four road outings with Saturday night's 30-point victory over the Stanford Cardinal, the 2025-26 Duke basketball collection now boasts a 20.4 averaging scoring margin. The No. 6-ranked Blue Devils (17-1, 6-0 ACC), whose 80-50 win at Stanford marked the largest margin of victory by a Maples Pavilion visitor in over nine years, are outscoring their opponents, 85.5-65.1, better than what each of the program's five national champions posted.

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And the 20.4 average now appears alone at No. 4 on the all-time Duke basketball list. The current batch of Blue Devils, featuring a Naismith Award frontrunner in freshman power forward Cameron Boozer, check in below Cooper Flagg & Co.'s 20.5 average scoring margin from last season plus the back-to-back 1997-98 and 1998-99 tallies of 21.5 and 24.7, respectively.

As for the highest among Duke's national champs, that came in 2000-01 with a 20.2 average scoring margin, bumped by 2025-26 to where it currently stacks up at No. 5 in school history.

Duke Basketball Head Coach on Recent Blue Devil Dominance

Granted, Jon Scheyer and his fourth Duke team still have a long way to go, sitting just past the midway point of their regular season and having completed just a third of its ACC slate. Even so, it's safe to say Scheyer feels optimistic after guiding the Blue Devils to become the first in the ACC to go 2-0 in California this season and watching them do so by a combined 45 points over Stanford and the Cal Golden Bears last week.

Duke basketball head coach Jon Scheyer | Brad Penner-Imagn Images

"I think it says a lot about the character of this team," Scheyer noted on Saturday night. "Every team has their own journey. I think these guys, they put themselves in the spotlight to be criticized. They put themselves in the spotlight to grow up in front of millions of people. What comes with that, right?

"And I think the thing that I've learned with our group, they continue to respond. Always. We've played in some big-time environments this year."

Next up on the Duke basketball schedule is a home bout against the unranked Wake Forest Demon Deacons (11-7, 2-3 ACC) in Cameron Indoor Stadium at 5:45 p.m. ET Saturday (The CW Network).

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