Courtesy Duke Sports Information
Thu, November 02, 2017
DURHAM, N.C. – For the fourth consecutive time, the Duke men’s basketball team has been chosen as the top Division I men’s basketball program by Basketball Times.
Basketball Times, a monthly magazine that focuses on college basketball, publishes its ranking every five years and a program must have won two-thirds of their games over the past 10 years in order to qualify. The magazine uses six equally weighted categories – winning percentage, the number of former players on NBA rosters, federal graduation rate, academic peer assessment score, program cleanliness and head coach ranking – in order to measure the programs against each other. The consistency that has made Duke Basketball the gold standard in the sport has led the Blue Devils to the spot in each of the last four rankings spanning 20 years.
The Blue Devils took the top spot with an average of 3.5, well ahead of second place Notre Dame’s 9.3 average. Not only did Duke take the top spot as a program, but head coach Mike Krzyzewski finished atop the coaching poll. Krzyzewski finished with seven of the 10 first place votes to regain the top spot after he finished in second in the 2012 edition. It’s the third time that Krzyzewski has topped the coaches’ poll while never finishing below second.
Duke, ranked No. 1 in the preseason AP and USA Today Coaches polls, takes on Bowie State on Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m. in Cameron Indoor Stadium to finish out the exhibition portion of its schedule.
Top 10 Programs (Lowest to highest average)
1. Duke 3.5
2. Notre Dame 9.3
3. Wisconsin 9.5
4. Gonzaga 10.2
5. Villanova 10.5
6. Davidson 12.2
7. Belmont 12.3
8. Michigan State 12.5
9. Butler 13.0
10. Kansas 13.3
