{"id":11276,"date":"2010-12-04T12:59:37","date_gmt":"2010-12-04T17:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=11276"},"modified":"2010-12-04T12:59:37","modified_gmt":"2010-12-04T17:59:37","slug":"college-basketball-preview-butler-bulldogs-at-duke-blue-devils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/college-basketball-preview-butler-bulldogs-at-duke-blue-devils-11276\/","title":{"rendered":"College Basketball Preview: Butler Bulldogs at Duke Blue Devils"},"content":{"rendered":"

Butler Bulldogs at Duke Blue Devils
\nSaturday, 12\/4\/10, 3:15 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ESPN
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Duke -15
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Duke -14.5
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 142
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 143.5<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Duke Blue Devils have plenty to be happy about with an 81-game home winning streak against non-conference opponents<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Butler will square off with Duke for the second time in seventh months at the IZOD Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey.\u00a0 \u201cIt used to be when you told people you played for Butler and they weren\u2019t from Indiana, you had to explain where that was,\u201d said Matt Howard.\u00a0 \u201cNow, they all say, \u2018You have a chance to win the national championship here.\u2019\u00a0 A lot of what happened last season has really helped our program.\u201d\u00a0 The Bulldogs fell in last year\u2019s national championship game, 61-59, against today\u2019s opponent.\u00a0 Butler is 0-2 all-time against No. 1-ranked teams.\u00a0 The team is 2-3 ATS this season and 37-37 ATS the last three years.\u00a0 The college basketball lines page has them listed as a double-digit underdog.<\/p>\n

The Bulldogs are one of just three NCAA Division I schools to win at least 25 games in each of the last four seasons.\u00a0 The other two are BYU and Kansas, but the program has suffered some early losses to start the season.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re close to where we want to be,\u201d said coach Brad Stevens.\u00a0 \u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is maybe play a few more home games that we don\u2019t have to return.\u201d\u00a0 Butler\u2019s 71-68 overtime loss to Evansville on November 27 snapped a 17-game winning streak for the Bulldogs at Hinkle Fieldhouse.\u00a0 It was their first loss at home to the Purple Aces since 1994.<\/p>\n

Duke enters the contest with a perfect 7-0 record and are looking to open the season 8-0 for the 16th time under Coach K.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re not looking to be good,\u201d said freshman guard Kyrie Irving.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re looking to be great.\u201d\u00a0 The Blue Devils are 9-1 all-time against teams currently in the Horizon League and they have a +18.3 scoring margin in those contests.\u00a0 Head coach Mike Krzyzewski is also a dominating 18-1 all-time at the Meadowlands and the program has won 11 consecutive games at the venue.\u00a0 Duke is 10-0 in NCAA Tournament games and 8-1 in regular season games in East Rutherford, New Jersey.\u00a0 The squad is 13-9 ATS in neutral court games.<\/p>\n

The Blue Devils have won 17 consecutive games dating back to a 79-72 loss at Maryland on March 3, 2010.\u00a0 Duke has also managed to win 25 of its last 26 games.\u00a0 Even more impressive, the team has won 34 straight games against teams outside of the traditional power conferences.\u00a0 Many thought the team may suffer an early season letdown after winning the national championship last year, but it has trailed for only three minutes this season.\u00a0 Don\u2019t expect a slip up today, considering Duke has won 81 straight non-conference home games, the longest current streak in the NCAA.<\/p>\n

Bettors will be interested in the Bulldogs 24-8 ATS mark as an underdog, while the Blue Devils are 4-0 ATS as a favorite of 13 or more points.<\/p>\n

The hard court action is heading up and so are the college basketball handicappers at Maddux Sports!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Butler Bulldogs at Duke Blue Devils Saturday, 12\/4\/10, 3:15 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ESPN Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Duke -15 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Duke -14.5 Opening Total:\u00a0 142 Current Total:\u00a0 143.5 Butler will square off with Duke for the second time in seventh months at the IZOD Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey.\u00a0 \u201cIt used to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":9806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1444],"tags":[1394,695,1389,607,1661,3],"class_list":["post-11276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-headlines","tag-brad-stevens","tag-butler-bulldogs","tag-coach-k","tag-duke-blue-devils","tag-mike-krzyzewski","tag-ncaa-tournament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11277,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11276\/revisions\/11277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}