25. Duke Blue Devils Road Blues (2008 to 2012)
I’m a traditionalist. Wear white at home and wear the colors on the road. There’s something about the clean, crisp white look that looks great when you’re on home court. Duke University must have read my mind back in 2008 when they switched to white at home and blue on the road. Credit Nike for helping make the road blues gorgeous and worthy of wearing at home as well.
It’s not hard to make a blue and white color scheme work. You almost have to try for it to look bad. But this one stands out. The blue is a very nice dark shade. It complements the white and makes it pop a little bit. Even the patented swoosh mark works well with this design. It’s subtle, but the brand is still strong.
You can’t see it too well with this picture, but there’s a very nice black side stripe down the jersey and shorts. It resembles a racing stripe, outlined in white. The stripe adds a very nice touch, giving it a more modern and sharp look. Duke has a lot of people to please, so it must be hard to come up with jerseys everyone likes. They have to keep their older fanbase happy while drawing the younger crowd as well.
I have no clue why Duke dropped these because this is about as good as it gets. Their new road jerseys are nice, but the white outline is a bit weird. After this, Duke tried to switch the scheme a bit, making black the primary color and switching the stripe to blue. It worked, but not nearly as well as this.
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