Normally, when Duke ends its season with a win, a banner is going up soon.
But normal boarded the train and left the station a little more than a year ago. Duke’s 2021 two-game winning streak was terminated not by an opponent but rather by the pandemic that ended the 2020 season, also with Duke on a two-game winning streak.
Of course, Duke was going to the 2020 NCAA Tournament before everything shut down. The only questions were seed and location.
This year Duke needed to turn that two-game winning streak into a three, maybe four, maybe even five-game winning streak to keep playing.