Duke basketball in recent weeks has been like spring weather in North Carolina. If you don’t like what you see, just wait a little while.
During the second half of the ACC schedule through the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, Blue Devil fans have been ditching their jacket mid-morning and wearing out the thermostat, switching between A/C and heat.
Coach Jon Scheyer appeared to have the Blue Devils on a roll, winning five straight until an inexplicable loss at Wake Forest where the Duke defense suddenly vanished, allowing season worsts in defensive efficiency and opponent shooting allowed.
After getting court stormed in Winston-Salem, Duke appeared to be back on track, winning three in a row, all by comfortable margins, before, again, the defense dissolved in the season finale against North Carolina, with a share of the ACC regular season title at stake.
Then, Duke seemed to sleepwalk through its ACC Tournament game against NC State, failing to stop the Wolfpack momentum and getting swept out of D.C. in just one game.
New beginning
Question marks dotted the roster as Duke traveled to Brooklyn for the first two rounds of March Madness, but it turned out some unfamiliar opponents were just what the doctor ordered for the Blue Devils.
There were some tight moments early against Vermont, but the Blue Devils pulled away for a 64-47 win that showed that the reported demise of Duke’s defense were premature. Duke held the Catamounts to 25 points below their season scoring average.
“I thought the defense was terrific for us,” Scheyer said. “I thought the collective effort and focus was there. Are there some breakdowns of things that you have to clean up? Sure, like, of course. But Vermont is a tough team to guard, the way they spread you, their movement.”
After Vermont went on a second-half run to cut into Duke’s lead, the Blue Devils responded on defense, shutting out Vermont for the final four minutes of the game. It was a lesson learned the hard way—through back-to-back losses to Carolina and State.
“That’s what we talked about the last week,” Mark Mitchell said. “When we get in these tight moments to go deeper, get stops and we did that.”
“We stayed poised down the stretch,” Jared McCain agreed. “They hit tough shots and we stayed poised. And we worked on it all week, get defensive stops, defense is going to win these games. We have the talent for offense; it’s going to be defense.”
Second-round explosion
That brought the Blue Devils into a second-round matchup against a physical, defense-first team—the same type of team that ended their 2022-23 season in the round of 32 a year ago.
It wouldn’t be a repeat of the Tennessee game from the previous season, however, because a change in the weather was on the horizon for Duke. Instead of leaning on their newfound defensive prowess, Duke turned into an offensive machine, torching JMU, one of the top five perimeter defenses in the nation, from three-point range.
McCain hit a three 14 seconds into the game and gave a smirk to the James Madison section of the crowd. Five more made threes later, he gave a Michael Jordan type shrug.
“I don’t know what I did out there, to be honest with you,” McCain said, looking like a cat brushing canary feathers from his mouth. “Yeah, I don’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t really conscious out there.”
When the dust cleared, McCain had hit 8-of-11 from three for 30 points. As a team, Duke hit 14-of-28 from beyond the arc, setting a team high, as well as shattering previous season bests for JMU opponents. Duke also turned it over less than 10% of the time, just the second team to accomplish that against James Madison in three months, and the Blue Devils’ 1.44 points per possession also far exceeded the previous best mark achieved by a JMU foe.
On to the Sweet 16
Now, Duke heads to Dallas to face Houston, the top seed in the region and the consensus top defense in the country. The Cougars rank first overall in defensive efficiency and top three in opponent shooting, turnover rate and blocked shot rate. They also slow the pace and choke out opponents. At the other end of the floor, they’re No. 13 in offensive efficiency. The winner of that game will get either No. 2 Marquette or NC State, still riding its amazing March magic run.
The weekend presents a variety of challenges to the Blue Devils, but variety has been the hallmark of Duke’s last month and a half.
