College basketball was on a big stage on Boston on Tuesday Feb. 4, 2020 when the Duke Blue Devils came to town. Danny Ainge and Jayson Tatum were sitting courtside at this game. Boston College, who typically does not draw much of a crowd, sold the game out. It was half Duke fans in the building. This was the first sellout of the season for Boston College. Duke is the gold standard of college basketball; they have won five national championships in the past 30 years. Duke is having a slightly down year, even though they are currently ranked number seven in the country. For six consecutive years, Duke has had a top three pick and that streak is likely to end this year. 
The Celtics don’t have a top draft pick, but there will be available Duke players in the draft. Vernon Carey Jr. is projected to be the number nine pick in the draft, according to nbadraft.net. Tre Jones and Cassius Stanley are projected second round picks, they are certainly players the Celtics will be interested in. They are terrific college players, but there are questions by scouts about how they will transition to the next level. It is possible those guys could become first round picks in the future if they stay in school. Duke players traditionally leave school early, there have been players who entered the NBA Draft as a Freshman and were not even drafted. Vernon Carey Jr. did not have his best game, only shooting 5–13. Picking up his fourth foul certainly took him out of rhythm. Tre Jones was extremely clutch, scoring 18 points and making the key baskets when it looked like Duke would lose. Cassius Stanley is one of most athletic players in the country, he threw down a one-handed dunk on an ally oop. He jumped so high to get that ball. 
This was a wildly entertaining game, much more competitive than expected. 
A storyline of this game is that Boston College has a former Duke player who transferred, Derryck Thornton. He did a great job, scoring 21 points in this game. That point total was the 
most on either team. BC led 12–2 to start, 24–21 at halftime, and 47–43 with eight minutes left. Duke look the lead with 6:15 left and never looked back. It was an extremely ugly game, Duke won 63–55, neither team was scoring efficiently. Teams shot a combined 3–33 from three. 
Coach K was very upset after the game. It’s obvious he wanted to win by more than 8 against an 11–12 BC team. He felt like they were extremely lucky to win “They have a lot of adversity with me because they didn’t listen to me, so they’re in trouble with me and that’s the main adversity that they have, because it’s stupid not to listen. I’ve warned them for two days about it. I’ve watched their recent games—they’ve been playing great, not good. Jim Christian is a good coach, and these kids played their butts off and I thought they did that even better than what I’ve seen in the last three games. They took it up a notch. They were very good tonight. They were certainly deserving of winning—we were fortunate tonight.” These quotes are from the official Duke basketball website. The thing that he was most upset about is the fact that they did not show up early, getting down 12–2 to start. 
It’s sometimes human nature for a team to get overconfident after winning by 39 the first meeting. Any chance that BC had of making the NCAA Tournament is over, they have not made the NCAA Tournament since 2009. Holy Cross, UMass, Boston University, Northeastern, and Harvard have all made the NCAA Tournament more recently than BC. Rutgers and Washington State are the only Power 5 teams with a longer tournament drought than BC. Despite not making the tournament, BC still has been able to accumulate talent. Jared Dudley, Reggie Jackson, Jerome Robinson, and Ky Bowman are current NBA players who went to BC. Dudley is on the Lakers as a role player, Jackson is scoring 14.1 points per game on the Pistons, Jerome Robinson was traded to the Wizards at the trade deadline, and Ky Bowman is a rookie on the Warriors, scoring 7.3 points per game as a rookie.