The Coastal Carolina Chanticleers will travel to Durham on Thursday night for a non-conference showdown against the Duke Blue Devils. The drive from Conway, South Carolina to Durham, North Carolina is just 187 miles but these two programs have met just one time in their history. The only meeting between Coastal Carolina and Duke took place in November 2009 where Duke cruised to a 25 point victory. The Chanticleers finished as the 148 naked team at KenPom that season while Duke finished #1. Duke is currently ranked #1 at KenPom again and the result of this game should be an even bigger Duke win since Coastal Carolina is the much less talented team.
Duke beat Army by 34 points in their first game of the season while Coastal lost to Eastern Michigan by one. The Chanticleers are expected to finish just 14-17 on the season according to KenPom and return just 20.6 percent of their minutes from a season ago. The Duke veterans should have the Blue Devils ready to play in game two in front of their home crowd and I expect them to leave no doubt in this game.
The Blue Devils are one of the best teams in the country and should bounce back from a poor shooting performance against Army. Coastal Carolina shot just 29 percent from three-point land against a much worse team than Duke, so I do not see the Chanticleers being able to score consistently enough to keep this game close. Take Duke to cover the big spread.
*Duke -40.5 available at time of publishing. Playable at Duke -41*
