There were concerning things about Duke’s 6-point loss to Michigan State 79-73, but there were some areas to be excited about as well. Obviously the performance wasn’t what we are used to when we watch Duke Basketball, but honestly, I’ve been a little more reticent than most who follow and cover this team to believe the hype. I’ve mentioned in several tweets during the offseason that it all feels a bit like a media narrative more so than anything based on what we can actually see, hear, smell, touch, or taste. I don’t say that to discount the job the staff has done to build a roster; it looks to be and I think will be a great Duke season, but the glaze has felt very manufactured and a bit icky. Part of me thinks Jon Scheyer feels similarly. I think he realizes this team will be a work in progress, and that is perfectly fine if it is. The team isn’t going to have that functional generational talent ready to take the NCAA by storm. Yes, every fan seems to be ready to fill the vacuum left by Cam Boozer with Joaquim Boutje-Boumtje, and he is a very talented player who in a year’s time may very well be that generational talent, but as I’ve said all along, he’s a 17-year-old kid, taking a step up in competition, toughness, and playing a different brand of basketball. It’s going to take time. The Blue Devils will need to lean on their players with experience. John Blackwell is going to need help generating shot attempts; he still shot 4-11 from 3 against a stifling defense. Duke needs Caleb Foster to possibly get more reps; he’s coming back from injury, of course, but he showed in flashes that he can get to his spots. Some people seem to have this notion that Patrick Ngongba needs to just sit in the paint and become one-dimensional. I think that is a fallacy and a very lazy way to look at basketball—that makes Duke very beatable because those shots for others become that much harder to generate. Yes, Pat was stuck at the top of the key late in possession, but that was not his fault, nor was it by design. He was void of targets; Duke was unable to get separation from defenders, which left Duke late in the shot clock with zero actions and then a desperation shot attempt. The guards must be better; they must help the bigs and keep the flow going. Driving incessantly into the teeth of a good defense is an abandonment of what they’ve worked on throughout the pre-season, but I assume there will be a lot more offensive installations introduced moving forward.
Defensively there are things that need to be adjusted. Jeremy Fears, for all of his antics, is a top-notch point guard, probably 1 of 1 this year in that regard. Fears was incredible—his change of direction, his pace—it was all just top-level from the guard position. This was a great experience for Duke—both the backcourt and the front court got to see what playing against an elite playmaker is like, and time will tell if they learn from it. Duke was flat-footed a lot of the time, slow-reacting, and out of position. Some of that was Duke; some of that was MSU meeting the moment in ways I didn’t expect. Duke’s PnR defense was bad, but some of it was Jeremy Fears making it look bad. This game tape is going to be so very valuable.
The good things I saw—there weren’t a lot, but I think we saw the value that Drew Scharnowski and Sebastian Wilkins bring to this team. They are two players that, no matter what the score is, are scrapping—that’s a very underrated and valuable asset that this team needs going forward. I think they both may have earned themselves more time—in Scharnowski’s case it’s health dependent, but he seemed to be fine. I thought Duke could have very easily been blown out in this game; they weren’t—the wheels didn’t completely fall off, and if at your worst outing you lose by 6, there’s a lot to build off of there.
So I asked myself after stepping back from it what the loss to Michigan State ultimately means. I don’t know if a recap is necessary here; we all saw what we saw—one of the few times in Jon Scheyer’s tenure where he didn’t recognize the product he put on the floor. And I don’t think it was necessarily from an X’s and O’s standpoint but more so from an effort and toughness standpoint. It’s very easy to just say they weren’t tough enough—and it’s true they weren’t. But is there an underlying reason why? I think the answer pretty much gets resolved as the schedule moves from game to game. Now, we also have to look at Michigan State; they did very little wrong in that game. They played like a team playing for a title and were not just happy to be there. As much as Duke fans like to give Tom Izzo the business because he doesn’t beat Duke as often as he’d like. He’s a great coach, and for the past few years he’s been looking for the right team and the right chemistry—maybe he’s found it, but just as Duke hasn’t lost the championship, Michigan State hasn’t won it.
All this to say, the next couple of weeks will determine if this was just a piss-poor performance—one they very easily could have overcome if they’d just done the small things—or a sign of things to come. I tend to trust Jon Scheyer; how is a competitor to figure it out whether that means a lineup shakeup, a new defensive wrinkle, or calling out his team to be tougher? He knows how to push the right buttons more often than not.
