Opponents Winning In Cameron

With rare exception visiting squads, even the best ones, haven’t been able to come to Cameron Indoor Stadium harboring realistic expectations of beating the home team. Certainly the weight of recent history, what might be called the odds, are against them.

Experience shows Duke wins at Cameron regardless of opponent with Mike Krzyzewski on the bench. Regardless of preceding stumbles on the road. Regardless of hangovers from previous results, no matter how glorious or discouraging.

Only Carolina has even a one-in-three chance of victory as a grudgingly welcomed guest.

Duke routinely wins around 85 percent of its games at Cameron, including this season’s 13-2 mark after losing to Virginia.

That prowess can be overwhelming, mentally undermining, augmented by a crowd that’s such a factor smart coaches routinely plan how to contend with it.

Recall, for instance, the 150-game home winning streak against shellshocked nonconference opponents that stretched from February 2000 to November 2019, when Stephen A. Austin stunned the Blue Devils in overtime.

Or recall that Duke has gone undefeated at home about one year in three over the last quarter-century: 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2014.

More recently, though, the results haven’t been so sterling.

Over the last four years, this one included, Duke has lost 11 times at Cameron. Still good, but a decline compared to its average of one loss annually over the preceding 21 years.

The numbers were skewed by the Devils’ 8-5 record at home in 2021. That was their most Cameron defeats since 1983 and 1982, Krzyzewski’s second and third years at Durham. Both of those seasons ended in 17-loss records overall.

(Incidentally the Devils’ most home losses and only losing home record came in 1944 when they were 7-8 at what was then Duke Indoor Stadium. That squad was 13-13 overall under Gerry Gerard.)

Over the past 25 years Duke has lost an amazingly few 33 home games. Most came against two of its most implacable rivals.

North Carolina won at Cameron in 9 of those last 24 seasons (38 percent of the time), with one more visit due on March 5.

Then came Maryland with four Cameron victories from 2000 until its self-exile from the ACC effective in 2014-15. Once the Terrapins left Krzyzewski vowed never to play them again and kept to his promise.

Starting next season Jon Scheyer may feel more charitably inclined toward Maryland, although it would be a bold break with league norms. ACC teams still shun the departed Terps. League members similarly turned their backs on South Carolina as a deserter, Duke among them, and never relented.

FSU, a 2-time winner at Duke since joining the ACC for the 1992 season (2007 and 2012 by a total of 4 points), comes to Durham on Feb. 19. Wake Forest, last triumphant at Cameron in January 1997, visits on Feb. 15.