Jon Scheyer shares key to Duke avoiding 5-12 upset

There’s no denying Duke drew one of the toughest 5-seed vs. 12-seed machups against Oral Roberts. The Golden Eagles haven’t just won its last 17 games, but they went a perfect 18-0 in Summit League play, 16-0 at home and enter the postseason with 30 wins on the year.

More simply, the Blue Devils will have their hands completely full — but Duke head coach John Scheyer isn’t letting the outside noise effect his team’s mentality. In Scheyer’s eyes, the Blue Devils are preparing for another deep NCAA Tournament run.

“Really it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what’s happened before. Any seed in the history of the tournament has lost. So nobody is safe going into this. You can’t take anything for granted. You have to just focus on one game,” Scheyer said ahead of the NCAA Tournament. “We know when you get a 12 seed, I think a lot of the time you have a champion. Oral Roberts, they’re the champion of their league, regular season and tournament. They haven’t lost since January 9th. They’re used to winning.

“For us, it’s — regardless of who you were going to play, but especially with them, we know how good they are and what a challenge it’s going to be.”

Oral Roberts has suffered just four losses on the entire season. Their losses include Saint Mary’s (5 seed in NCAA’s), Houston (1 seed), Utah State (10 seed) and New Mexico. The Lobos were the only team who did not earn a spot in the NCAA Tournament field and was sent to the NIT.

In all, Oral Roberts is 28-1 sine losing to Utah State on Nov. 22.

Tip-off between the Golden Eagles and Blue Devils is set for Thursday at 7:10 p.m. ET live on CBS. Duke has entered the game as six-point favorites.