We always knew this was going to be a difficult stretch of the season. And there’s a very good chance that Miami is the best team in the ACC.
But there’s no question that Duke’s men’s basketball took a big step in the wrong direction Monday night in the Sunshine State, getting clubbed by Miami 81-59.
It was pretty much a system-wide failure. Duke shot 40 percent from the field, turned it over 21 times, lost the battle of the boards 38-31 and never led a single second, not after falling behind 13-1 in about three minutes.
Miami beat Duke on the blocks, on the perimeter, in half-court, in transition. Miami’s veterans looked like veterans and Duke’s kids looked like kids.
Duke got the opening tap and that was the high-water mark. After an empty possession by the Devils Miami’s center Norchad Omier knocked down a 3-pointer 38 seconds into the game.
After going more than three minutes without that first field goal, Mark Mitchell, Dereck Lively II and Kyle Filipowski scored inside. But Duke simply couldn’t get the volume of stops it needed to make a game off it. After a Filipowski triple made it 19-10 Miami ran off seven straight points, holding Duke scoreless for three-and-a-half agonizing minutes.
“I think they just came out, punched us in the mouth first and we didn’t really respond,” Filipowski said. “I mean, granted, they are a good team, but they did nothing special today to make us play how poorly we did. That was kind of just ourselves and our attitude and our mindset going into the game. And we just didn’t really try and fight back.”
Jeremy Roach’s take?
“We’ve just got to be more together. When we get down, we can’t just go one-on-one, we can’t play hero ball, we’ve got to move it. Play inside out and just do what we have been all season. Obviously, Miami did a good job of making it tough for us, but we put that on ourselves for sure.”
It was 40-26 after 20 minutes, an emphatic Omier dunk right before the buzzer punctuating Miami’s dominance.
Miami scored the first nine points of the second half to go up 49-26 and the two teams basically traded baskets after that.
Jon Scheyer and Roach both focused on the turnovers.
““It starts with the turnovers, right?,” Scheyer rhetorically asked. “If you give any team, but a team as good as Miami, 21 turnovers and just layups and dunks in transition, it’s going to be a heck of a night for you. And some of them they were aggressive and got in the passing lanes, other times we just lost the ball.”
“I mean, we had 21 turnovers,” Roach added. “That was pretty much, that’s the game right there. If you give the ball away 21 times, the other team is probably going to win.”
Lively and Ryan Young led Duke with 11 points each. They both hit 5 of 6 from the field, the only players in Duke’s top eight to make at least half of their shots. The rest of the team combined for 12 for 42 from the field. That’s 28.5% and that’s really bad shooting.
Roach was Duke’s only other double-figure, with 10 points. Filipowski had 9.
The game’s three leading scorers were Omier (17), Jordan Miller (16) and unheralded Wooga Poplar, whose 14 points almost doubled his season average.
“It wasn’t the same level of competing, and the same look,” Scheyer said of his team. “And so that’s on me, on our guys, on our team. It’s disappointing, not okay with it. Not taking any credit away from them. They won; they beat us. No excuses. No excuses on our end. We’ll figure out where to go and how to improve from here. But disappointing for me.”
Virginia next, Saturday afternoon, another road game and one that won’t end well for Duke unless they bring a lot more energy and focus and confidence than what we saw Monday night.
ESPN says jump, the ACC says how high.
And Duke still has another one of these.
What I saw was Miami pressure the ball on the perimeter to push our offense away from the basket. We couldn’t pass or drive inside without turning the ball over. Miami’s intense defense befuddled our offense and negated our height advantage.