Did Duke wrap up an energy cycle with Wednesday night’s game against Auburn?

Or does the energy cycle extend to Sunday night’s ACC opener at Louisville?

Ehhh … bit of both, most likely.

Four of Duke’s last six games have been against elite teams. The Blue Devils didn’t come out of those games unscathed, faltering in late-game situations against Kentucky and Kansas.

But a team that starts three freshmen and whose best player is two weeks away from being 18 years old did a whole lot of growing up in the past month.

“We grew up and it feels good, it feels very good,” senior guard Sion James said. “But we also recognize it’s December and we’ve got a really good win. We go into this weekend 0-0, nothing we’ve done matters when we step on the floor in Louisville because we’re 0-0 in the league.

“We’ve got a league championship to win. We’re focused on what’s really important.”

So, there’s the pivot for Duke. Every ACC team other than Duke and Louisville was in action Saturday, with some closer-than-expected games (camera pans to Chapel Hill and Blacksburg, Va.).

As bad of a hit to the ACC’s reputation as its non-conference performance was, there’s a rejuvenating feeling to entering league play. As James pointed out, every team is now on equal footing.

Except, not exactly. Duke’s résumé puts the Blue Devils on a pedestal that means any ACC team that underperformed in the non-conference portion of its schedule — which is most of them, to be blunt — can do some repair work on its résumé by beating Duke.

The first of those games comes Sunday night.

Here’s what to know ahead of Sunday’s game:

Time: 6 p.m.

Location: KFC Yum! Center, Louisville, Ky.

TV: ACC Network.

Announcers: Matt Schumacker (play-by-play) and Jon Crispin (analyst).

Series; last meeting: Duke leads 15-9; Duke won 84-59 on Feb. 28 last season, sweeping both meetings last season. Duke has won five straight matchups against Louisville.

Records: Duke 6-2; Louisville 5-3.

Stat to watch: 60.5% | 41.5%.

The first number is Louisville’s 2-point field goal percentage, seventh-best in the country; the second is Duke’s 2-point field goal defense, which is eighth-best in the country (both per KenPom and as of Saturday night).

This feels like the game within the game.

Louisville takes a lot of 3-pointers — more than half of its field goal attempts have come from beyond the 3-point line. So, it’s not like they bludgeon teams from inside the paint.

But when they do take the ball inside, they’re among the most-efficient teams in the country. As you’d kind of imagine, Louisville’s regulars all have decent percentages from inside. Most impressive might be point guard Chucky Hepburn, a Wisconsin transfer who’s made 26 of 36 (72.2%) from inside the arc. Or it’s center James Scott having made 23 of 26 (88.5%) 2-pointers, the No. 1 clip in the country among qualifying players.

There’s the other side of this equation to watch, though.

Duke has KenPom’s top-rated defense, only allowing 88.9 points per 100 possessions. The Blue Devils obviously do a lot of things well on that end of the court and the best one is limiting how many points opponents score inside the arc.

It helps when your starting is 7-2 with a 9-5 standing reach, as is the case with Khaman Maluach. The freshman hasn’t had a block in the last two games; he doesn’t have to block shots to have a presence and effect shots in the paint.

Cooper Flagg has had multiple blocks in five of Duke’s eight games. Maliq Brown isn’t as good of a shot-blocker; mostly because his lightning-quick hands create so many deflections and jump-balls before shots are attempted against him.

Matchup to watch: Duke’s Cooper Flagg (No. 2) vs. Louisville’s J’Vonne Hadley (No. 1) or Noah Waterman (No. 93).

Louisville has played one game without Kasean Pryor and it was run off its home court by 23 against Mississippi.

Pryor was getting the bulk of Louisville’s minutes at the 4-position but suffered a season-ending injury in the Battle 4 Atlantis championship game (a loss to Oklahoma).

In Pryor’s absence, Hadley started against Ole Miss at the 4-spot and was something of a bright spot, with 12 points and nine rebounds (also had three turnovers). Hadley is a 6-6, 215-pounder who spent the last two seasons at Colorado.

Waterman started against Ole Miss but at the 5-spot; he had four points and nine rebounds. It seems that when Scott (mentioned above) enters, Waterman goes to the 4-spot. He’s a sixth-year player who measures in at 6-11, 230, and has played at Niagara, Detroit Mercy and BYU before this season.

So, given how much Duke puts on Flagg’s plate — and how good he’s been — Hadley and/or Waterman are going to be the ones tasked with defending him. And they’ll be trying to score against him.

Flagg has three 20-point games and they’ve all come against elite teams — Kentucky, Arizona and Auburn. He fills up the stat sheet in ways that he was expected to, leading Duke in scoring, rebounding, assists and blocks.

Cardinal to watch: Guard Chucky Hepburn (No. 24).

The Wisconsin transfer had eight points in each of his first two games at Louisville; he’s picked up the scoring, with double figures in every game since — and that includes a 32-point explosion against West Virginia in Atlantis.

Hepburn was, for lack of a better term when discussing point guard play, a game-managing type of point guard for most of threes seasons at Wisconsin. The Badgers ranked 215th, 337th and 304th in adjusted tempo in those three seasons.

Louisville doesn’t race up and down the court but the Cardinals are 117th in adjusted tempo this season — which has seemed to unlock Hepburn as more of a scorer and distributor. He’s not only averaging a career-best 15.1 points, but also a career-high 4.5 assists per game.

Blue Devil to watch: Guard Tyrese Proctor (No. 5).

Well, only because Isaiah Evans has a separate story about him.

Proctor earns a nod, though, given he hit a couple of the biggest shots of Duke’s win over Auburn and is quietly becoming a steady playmaker for the Blue Devils.

The junior guard has only scored under 10 points once this season. He’s shooting 46.3% from 3-point range, he’s rebounding at the best rate of his career, and his leadership can’t be measured by stats.

There’s a matchup element to this, as Proctor figures to get the assignment against either Hepburn or Terrence Edwards Jr., Louisville’s other dangerous guard. That would be a familiar matchup for Proctor, if it’s Edwards — he was James Madison’s best player last season and had 13 points, two assists and four turnovers when Duke beat the Dukes in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

What’s on deck: Duke is going to have two instances in ACC play of playing two games in three days, so the Blue Devils will get some prep work ahead of time.

Duke comes back from Louisville for a quick turnaround against Incarnate Word on Tuesday night. Obviously, playing a Southland Conference team that was 8-23 last season and is 4-4 to start this year isn’t the same as playing a couple of ACC teams in quick-turnaround games. But it’ll be a good gauge of where Duke is with minimal rest and prep time.

Louisville doesn’t get all that much rest time after this one, either. The Cardinals play UTEP on Wednesday night, and then they’re at Kentucky next Saturday (Dec. 14).

KenPom prediction: Duke wins 73-66.

What a Duke loss looks like: In eight games, Duke has played one team — Wofford — that took more 3-pointers than 2s.

Louisville has taken more 3s than 2s in five of its eight games.

So, Duke losing this game is probably going to feature both the Cardinals hoisting a lot of 3s *and* making somewhere around 35-40% of them, if not better.

Offensively, given Louisville’s rotation only goes seven deep and the Cardinals are missing a few players to injuries (guard Koren Johnson won’t play), Louisville could try to slow this game down. If that makes Duke impatient and leads to some forced 3s and/or turnovers, Duke’s offense will struggle.

What a Duke win looks like: You should expect Duke to run Louisville off the 3-point line as much as it can.

So, if the Blue Devils can limit the Cardinals’ 3s and/or force contested shots, Duke will have another game of stifling an opponent in its worst offensive performance of the season.

For Duke’s offense … what is there to say other than the Blue Devils have to do the same thing they just did?

Duke scored 1.34 points per possession against Auburn — the Tigers’ worst defensive game since Feb. 2021.

If the Blue Devils keep doing that to opponents, they’re not going to lose many games, given how good their defense has been.