Duke's stay in ACC Tournament not a long one
Poor shooting, lack of energy doom Devils against NC State
Kyle Filipowski (28 points, 14 rebounds, 3 steals)? Two thumbs up. Mark Mitchell (18 points, 8 rebounds)? Welcome back; well, except for that 0- for 4 from the line.
I suppose I should add a late comeback that enabled Duke to cut a 10-point NC State lead to two points late.
But that’s about all the positives I can glean from a desultory 74-69 Duke loss to North Carolina State that ended Duke’s short stay at the 2024 ACC Tournament and raised some serious concerns going into next week’s NCAA Tournament.
Duke began the game like they’d been off for four weeks not four days. It took Duke almost five minutes to get their first field goal. Duke had four points in the first six minutes.
And except for their two bigs Duke never warmed up. Duke’s starting guard trio of Jeremy Roach, Tyrese Proctor and Jared McCain made a combined 7 for 28 from the field, 3 for 14 from beyond the arc. Duke got exactly zero points from its bench.
Insert your brick joke of choice.
In fairness to McCain it should be noted that he banged heads with teammate Jaylen Blakes in warmups and needed some treatment.
Talk about your bad omens.
But Jon Scheyer didn’t let his backcourt off the hook.
“Well, those guys, we need them to be better. We rely on them to do so much for us. It's not the scoring. It's everything else. It's the poise. It's the rebounding. It's the guarding. It's everything else that comes with it.
“I've seen all of them do it, have it at different points. But we need it every game. We don't have a team where we're wearing you down with our depth necessarily, so we need those five guys that start, we need them to come out with such force right away.
“Clearly we didn't have that tonight. I wish I had the answer for you. I can't tell you why. But is Jeremy Roach important to our team? Absolutely. Tyrese, Jared, we need those guys to play at a high level, like they have for a majority of the year. That's the bottom line.”
Duke actually led several times in the first half, 28-24 with just under six minutes left the biggest lead.
But in a pattern all too familiar Duke did not close the half well. Michael O’Connell hit a 3 to put State up 33-32 with about a minute left, Proctor missed twice on the same possession and D.J. Horne barely beat the clock to put State up 35-32 at the half, an 11-4 Wolfpack run to close the half that did not bode well for Duke.
State scored the first six points of the second half to extend its lead to nine and Duke spent the entire second half trying to catch up, closing to two or three points on several occasions but never putting together the run it needed to pull off the comeback, some key offensive rebounds by Mohamed Diarra and two missed foul shots by Mitchell with Duke down by five and 1:46 left particular culprits; Diarra ended with 16 rebounds, four offensive.
Scheyer praised Filipowski and Mitchell’s “competitive fire. They almost willed us to win the game.”
Everybody else? Not so much.
“We didn’t have that collectively overall,” that being competitive fire.
“I don't feel we handled what we could control tonight,” he added. “No doubt in my mind. If we want that feeling a week from now where you lose or you exit the tournament where you didn't control what you could control, that would be a real shame. I'm not going down that way. I know these guys aren't going down that way. For us, it's back to work.”
Scheyer acknowledged that he and his coaches and his team have talked about the slow starts but still don’t have a handle on it and all of these guys know that the next one likely ends the season.
All of Duke’s eight losses have been by single digits. But this was the first time a fresh Duke team lost to an opponent playing its third game in three days. Duke said all the right things after last Saturday’s loss to North Carolina. But except for Filipowski and Mitchell, they simply didn’t follow up, not with the consistency Duke is going to need to advance very far in the NCAAs.
Filipowski earned the right to critique his teammates for failing to match his sense of urgency.
“Yeah, for me at least it's even more of a wake-up call because we could have just had more one game left to the season now, and you may have high expectations just with winning the ACC and things like that. But you've got to really see the reality of it and see that every team is really fighting for their lives, and we just have to want it more than any other team that we play against.”
There was no alpha on the floor last night, and the team did not have the proper responses to time/score situations. After the stagnant first 15 seconds of the possession starting at 1:00 left, a time out should have been called. Under K they had scripted time and score endgame situations to close practice. Important especially for the behind situations, which come up more rarely in competition for winning teams. There was zero poise and Flip was limping, Duke needed to regroup. But this wasn’t recognised it was like they were paralyzed. Nobody from our corner rang the bell and down goes Frazier. Sure, next play, but it won’t be any easier from here on out.
I was suspended last night by the DBR Board for " venting" during the second half of the loss to State.
Really ? Well enjoy enjoy commenting on Carolina winning the ACC Tournament without me.
I completely understand John OB's comments below.
Duke basketball has been a fun diversion since I was a student during the Gminski era.
But for whatever reason this season has not been fun- and the losses have nothing to do with it.
It has been joyless.
While our coaches are all world class recruiters, I miss the passion and emotion of Coach K; the current cool detachment of our coaches isn't working for me.
The talent on next year's team looks spectacular- but I hope our cool young coaches grab some physical MEN who are team leaders in the transfer portal or the bullying from other teams we saw this year will continue.
See, I wasn't venting ?