It's us vs Duke for the MSG top seed (1 or 2). If they somehow win their games against us, we don't get MSG so these losses for Duke are huge. Who cares about strength of schedule since we're trending a 1 seed right now. We're not in a mid major conference.
If Duke drops a couple more games then even if they win both against us with some miracle, we can still jump them if we take care of the rest of our games.