As the potential of this team starts to come into focus
Let’s start with what we didn't like from Duke’s visit to Arizona.
There were too many turnovers. Arizona put a lot of defensive pressure on the Blue Devils and the young Blue Devils fell for it. Cooper Flagg had four and the team as a whole had 14.
Duke was also not good from the line, hitting just 8-13. In a tighter game that would have been a serious problem and no doubt it’ll get heavily reviewed before the Kansas game.
Shooting also wasn’t that great, with Duke hitting 10-26 from three point range and 26-61 overall.
There are other little niggling concerns too.
Overall though?
Wow! Great game by Duke.
The folks in Tucson were waiting for this one and they were excited, and the Blue Devils took that excitement away and made it a learning experience for the Wildcats, because Duke did a number on Arizona Friday night.
This is a team that averaged 99.3 coming into this game. Duke held Arizona to 44.3 under their scoring average. Tommy Lloyd is a great three point coach. What did Arizona get there? Just 6-23 (26.1 percent). And overall, just 21-53 for 39.6 percent.
Only freshman Jaden Bradley shot well, hitting 8-16. Long-time Duke nemesis and former Tar Heel Caleb Love shot just 3-13. He fired up nine threes and hit just one of those. And while Duke had 14 turnovers, they forced 15, and scored 19 off those turnovers.
In short, Duke looked at Arizona’s strengths and strangled their shooting, their offensive rebounding, their passing and ballhandling and their transition game.
And this was with three freshmen starting, mind you.
One of them of course was Cooper Flagg, who had another wonderful all-around game. He led Duke in scoring with 24, including, we think, a 10 point personal run in the second half.
He also put tremendous pressure on Arizona on both ends of the court. Flagg had one steal, but it seemed like more, and two blocks. It’s not an exact analogy, but it’s like Wayne Gretzky out there, moving to where the game is going. People focus on shooting, where he has some work to do, but the rest of his game? Off the charts.
There was a lot more too. Khaman Maluach didn’t have huge stats but he changed or discouraged a lot of shots and hit the first three of his career. Kon Knueppel started a bit slow but in the end, he hit two backbreaking threes. Tyrese Proctor and Caleb Foster had some ups and downs, but they had just three turnovers between them, scored 16 points, grabbed eight boards and had two steals.
Duke got just eight points from the bench, but Sion James had his best game yet and Maliq Brown’s contributions are going to be primarily defensive. He had just two points but he also had seven boards, three assists, two steals and a block. He was really good.
This was a statement game for Duke. Winning by 15 on the road, much less at McKale, is not easy to do. Taking away a team’s strengths like that is also not easy to do.
As we said at the beginning, it wasn’t a perfect game for the Devils. IF they had shot better..IF they had held on to pressure better...IF they had held on to the ball better...IF Maluach had played better...Duke might have won by 25.
That’s a lot of ifs, of course, but you’re starting to get an idea of just how good this team can be. The future is really bright.
Notes - Caleb Love has had a lot of swagger against Duke over the years but with several defenders to throw at him, he didn't have many answers...we didn't know that Motiejus Krivas had had an injury, but last year, Duke had Kyle Filipowksi recovering from his hip surgeries...just part of the game...Duke missed a big opportunity when Proctor missed both free throws on a technical...at times in this game, the ball movement was just superb...ultimately Duke’s size and athleticism was too much for the Wildcats to overcome...
