Luke DeCock: Who will win the ACC tournament? Five bold predictions, even as Duke expected to dominate.

RALEIGH, N.C. — A year after the most unpredictable ACC tournament of all time, we’re facing what may be the most predictable outcome in a generation.

Duke is roughly a three-in-four favorite to come away with the title, and given the way the Blue Devils have manhandled opponents over the past month, even that feels a little low. Those are massive odds — Gonzaga-in-the-WCC odds — unfamiliar to the ACC. Which is unfortunate for the ACC, because it really needs someone other than Duke, Clemson or Louisville to win and claim an unlikely NCAA tournament berth the way N.C. State did last year.

The Blue Devils are likely to be favored by at least a dozen points in the quarterfinals and semifinals, if they proceed as expected. And for good reason: The 13 points North Carolina lost to Duke by on Saturday, on the road in Chapel Hill, in a game that was all but settled for the final five minutes, is as close as anyone has come to beating Duke in a month. And the Blue Devils have both Maliq Brown and Tyrese Proctor back and healthy. Also: Cooper Flagg, comma.

Even with Flagg playing the all-eyes-on-me role Zion Williamson played when Duke won the last ACC tournament in Charlotte, in 2019, Duke losing this year wouldn’t be quite as improbable as N.C. State winning last year, the ultimate basketball black swan event, but there are no guarantees.

In fact, you can make a case for a few realistic and not-as-realistic possibilities, like …

— Clemson: The obvious second choice. The Tigers beat Duke by six at home, which works out to roughly even on a neutral court. While the Blue Devils have been on a tear ever since, Clemson is big and physical enough to disrupt Duke’s offense and the Tigers haven’t lost since that game, either. You could argue a rematch would basically be a coin flip.

Unlike Clemson, Duke handled other would-be challengers like Louisville, Wake Forest and North Carolina with relative ease, even if it had to punt and switch to a zone to get past the Demon Deacons in Winston-Salem. (The return game in Durham was a total thumping.) SMU hasn’t beaten a good team all season, although if the Mustangs were to play Duke on Saturday, they would have had to have beaten at least one to get there.

No, if there’s a team that’s going to beat Duke straight-up, on merit, it’s Clemson, in a building that will be painted orange if that’s the case. The Tigers, who still have yet to win an ACC title in 71 tries, are the ACC’s best hope to derail Duke.

— Georgia Tech: There’s only one team in the ACC that has beaten Clemson and Louisville and it isn’t Duke. In Year 2, Damon Stoudamire has put together the ACC’s ultimate boom-or-bust squad, with three players who took more than 100 3-pointers in ACC play.

The Yellow Jackets have shown the ability to rise to the moment against the league’s best teams and also to forget they have a game on the schedule, like Saturday’s 26-point no-show at Wake Forest or a loss to Boston College, the latter not invited to Charlotte.

Guard Javian McCollum has been out with a concussion since the wins over Clemson and Louisville, missing eight games, although he did take part in Senior Night activities last week. If McCollum returns this week, Georgia Tech may be ready to boom again. And if the Jackets get past Virginia on Wednesday, they’ll be warmed up while Duke will just be starting the tournament Thursday.

Unlike Clemson, Georgia Tech has a proud ACC tournament pedigree — James Forrest! Jarrett Jack! Josh Pastner’s face shield! — and an upset run would fit right in.

— Pittsburgh: Remember Pittsburgh? One of the ACC’s three guaranteed NCAA tournament teams in December? The Panthers were 12-2 overall and 3-0 in the ACC, got smoked by Duke in Durham and never recovered. Pitt won one (1) ACC road game all year, which is still one better than N.C. State, but extraordinarily poor in a weak ACC.

So why Pitt? Because if there’s one player who could pull a Randolph Childress and single-handedly carry his team to an ACC title, it’s Pitt guard Jaland Lowe. The sophomore was a potential player-of-the-year runner-up in December (we all knew who was going to win already) and barely squeaked on to the all-ACC third team by a handful of votes thanks to Pitt’s collapse.

But when Lowe is on, he’s an exceptional scorer who can create space for himself and draw defenders away from his teammates. Lowe isn’t the 3-point shooter Childress was, but he’s explosive — he cleared the 20-point mark 10 times — and if he gets hot, look out.

(If 13th-seeded Pittsburgh loses to Notre Dame on Tuesday, a distinct possibility, sub in Markus Burton for Lowe, but with the caveat that Burton isn’t surrounded by the same quality of teammates.)

— Stanford: To quote former Notre Dame coach Mike Brey, “We’re in this league, too!” The Cardinal has been laboring away on the West Coast out of sight and mind but with one legit superstar in all-ACC center Maxime Reynaud and one ACC veteran in former Duke guard Jaylen Blakes, it’s a solid group that finished above .500 in the league despite all the boomerang travel.

At Washington State and San Francisco, coach Kyle Smith never won a Pac-12 or WCC tournament. And the Cardinal went 1-7 in the Eastern Time Zone, the only win coming in Chapel Hill. But it’s also a group that could theoretically improve while putting down roots and playing four games in a row in the same place.

— Duke, but ... Here’s a bold prediction to accompany a not-so-bold one. If Wake Forest and North Carolina play in Thursday’s second quarterfinal, as expected, the winner becomes the ACC’s fourth NCAA tournament team even with a loss to Duke on Friday as the Blue Devils roll to the title. It would not be out of the realm of possibility if that game became a play-in to a play-in game in Dayton.

Someone’s got to fill those 11 seeds, after all, even if Duke goes on to claim an NCAA auto-bid it doesn’t need.

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