After a very public humiliation in front of millions of viewers, thousands of fans at the Verizon Center and the President of the United States against Georgetown on Saturday, Duke will be back in action in Durham on Thursday, hosting Georgia Tech. Though some of the Blue Devils’ recent performances may make it absurd to ask, I wonder whether Duke’s play means it’s fighting against trends to make its first Final Four since 2004. The Blue Devils still rank second in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings, and the team that’s finished second in the rankings has made the Final Four four times in the last six years and won the title twice — Florida in 2007 and Connecticut in 2004 — but a couple of trends are evident.

I’m approaching this from two directions — bad defensive games and road play. I want to see whether the last 24 Final Four teams have had defensive games or road records to match Duke’s this season. The Blue Devils have twice — against North Carolina State and Georgetown most recently — allowed opponents to score at least 1.2 points per possession. The Blue Devils are also 1-4 on the road this season. Let’s look at these two issues separately and in the light of how past Final Four participants have fared.

Anomalous defensive performances: The last 24 teams to reach the Final Four have combined to allow opponents at least 1.2 points per possession a total of 18 times, or just 0.75 per team season. Ten of those teams never allowed an opponent to score that many points per possession in any game; 11 other teams had exactly one such defensive performance. Since Duke already has two, that’s not a good sign.

Still, we’re left with three teams that, like this year’s Duke squad, have had at least two such performances. Two of them made the Final Four in 2007, which was a season without a dominant team (much like this season, some would suggest, although many in Lawrence, Kan., would argue the point). That year, Florida was the best team, but the Gators went through the motions during most of the season before playing their best basketball in March. This was the only Final Four in which all of the teams allowed at least one 1.2-point-per-possession performance.

Georgetown and Ohio State, who met in the first national semifinal that year, combined for five games in which they allowed at least 1.2 PPP. Georgetown leads all recent Final Four participants with three such performances — at home against Old Dominion in November, at Pittsburgh in January and at home to Cincinnati later in January. After that Pittsburgh game at Petersen Events Center on Jan. 13, the Hoyas were just 11-5 and 1-2 in conference. They then went 19-1 in the 20 games leading up to the Ohio State matchup, becoming a truly elite offense and strong enough on defense. Georgetown, of course, had two memorable wins in the East Regional: a Jeff Green double-pivot game-winner against Vanderbilt and a last-minute comeback and overtime win against North Carolina.

Ohio State entered the NCAA Tournament 30-3 in 2007 behind a pair of dazzling freshmen — Mike Conley and Greg Oden. The Buckeyes had a couple of early defensive hiccups against elite opposition. OSU allowed 1.283 PPP at North Carolina on Nov. 29 and 1.216 PPP at Florida on Dec. 23. With his wrist injured, Oden didn’t play in the loss to UNC, though he did play 28 minutes against Florida’s terrific frontline a month later.

The other Final Four team to have at least two such performances was Michigan State from 2005. That Spartans defense was actually fairly mediocre for a Tom Izzo team, and MSU was just a No. 5 seed in the Tournament (whereas OSU and Georgetown were Nos. 1 and 2 respectively). MSU had its poor performances against future No. 12 seed George Washington in early December and future national runner-up Illinois on the first day of February.

Duke has already crossed this dubious threshold in losses at North Carolina State and Georgetown, this despite playing stifling defense through most of the rest of the season. That Duke allowed more than a point per possession to anemic St. John’s at home a game after Wisconsin torched the Blue Devils should have been a red flag. Still, Duke has only allowed even a point per possession in five games all season. It’s just that when the defense gets burned, it gets burned bad.

Road losses: Duke’s impressive win at Clemson briefly quieted those wondering about the Blue Devils’ inability to play well on the road, but the loss to the Hoyas on Saturday allowed critics to revert to their previous form. Duke is 1-4 on an opponent’s home floor this year, a woeful record. The Blue Devils will play five more games on the road this season, and if they don’t win all five, they’ll have to break a trend to reach Indianapolis.

The last 24 Final Four teams have an aggregate road winning percentage of 73.8. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that every Final Four team in the last six seasons has a winning road record.

You see that Duke is currently well off the pack in terms of road record. It’s interesting to note that three of the bottom four teams on this list won the title, and Georgia Tech made the final. So, relative road record doesn’t seem to make a difference in the Final Four, but it likely takes a team good enough to have a winning road record to get there.

This isn’t to say that Duke would be eliminated from Final Four contention with another road loss, but the point of looking at these trends is to find indicators to what makes for a long, successful run in March and which teams don’t meet muster. Clearly, trends are commonly broken, and nearly every trend is broken eventually.

You’ll notice that Georgetown of 2007 also finds itself low on this list with four road losses. If the Blue Devils are to mimic the predecessors of the team that just demolished them, the time is now to go on a long run. That Georgetown team left behind the memories of a frustrating first 12 weeks with a scintillating 20-game stretch. Duke will need to do the same — starting Thursday against a strong Yellow Jackets team — if Jon Scheyer is to ever play in a Final Four.