November basketball isn't always held up as the be-all and end-all of sports, but in all honesty, this is one of my favorite times in the season. The speed with which the idle speculation that has accumulated during the past several months is superseded and, in some cases, flatly contradicted by actual events is fairly close to amazing.

Here are some of the actual events that have caught my attention so far:

Duke's defense may not be as good as it looks on paper

To this point of the young season, the Blue Devils have held opponents to just 0.84 points per possession, an impressive number fueled in part by the fact that opponents have connected on just 17 percent of their 3-point attempts.

That may reflect good perimeter defense, granted. Certainly, Mike Krzyzewski's teams have long excelled at denying 3-point looks to opponents. But given that the best full-season numbers for 3-point percentage defense posted by Division I teams during the past decade have been about 10 or 11 percentage points higher than what the Blue Devils are currently showing, I think it's fair to say there's a correction coming.