I was anxiously awaiting to see how Duke would come out against Army, a team that, despite there being an obvious talent and size disparity, would fight the Blue Devils to the best of their ability until the final buzzer. True to form Army was scrappy, especially in the first half of the game, catching Duke off guard a few times with how willing they were to pull the trigger from nearly anywhere on the court, and when Duke would play overly aggressive on the perimeter to try to mitigate that, they’d backdoor cut. They scouted Duke fairy well, and Duke had some trouble pulling away in the first half. I wasn’t really surprised at that to be honest because as Jon Scheyer mentioned, this is a team that is still a week or two behind in terms of having their full complement of players in practice. Maliq Brown, a big piece of Duke’s flow, is still working his way back in terms of timing and shape.
To be honest, this game was definitely an incremental step towards where I think this team can be, they showed some serious growth at times. It was hard to fight the urge to yell at the television when Duke’s bigs would shoot 3’s, but honestly, when playing a team that you are fairly certain you are going to beat and have a decided size advantage, there are two schools of thought:
- You just ram it down their throats and pound the ball inside and play to that advantage, and everyone on the internet says, “wow, what a dominant performance”. The problem with that is that you’ve learned nothing about your team.
- You utilize the game to get guys used to each other, maybe try some lineups to see who and what configurations you can trust, and maybe play more to your weaknesses to try to address them. Even if the score is closer than you’d like, you’ve clearly learned more about your team. You play to habit and hustle rather than scores.
After both Duke’s dynamic wings having subpar games against Western Carolina, where neither hit a 3-point shot and combined to go 1-12 from the floor, they answered the bell and early against Army. Within the first 14 seconds of the game, Isaiah Evans nailed his first 3-point shot on his way to shooting 4-8 from beyond the arc and 5-10 overall. Evans also showed off some flashy passing, dishing 3 assists, ending the contest having scored 17 points, 3 rebounds and 2 blocked shots. Dame Sarr would show why scouts are high on his game, he seemed to catch fire in the first half, scoring a team high 19 points on 6-8 shooting and 3 for 5 from beyond the arc. The most impressive part of his game rarely shows on the stat sheet, but his ability to hound ball handlers on the perimeter is elite, and he ended up with 3 takeaways but a lot more deflections that disrupted the Army offense. Cayden Boozer showed in this game what makes him a special talent at the guard spot, dishing 8 assists to go with his 10 points. Duke’s point guard tandem combines for 12 assists and 3 turnovers – numbers the staff have to be delighted with.
Even adjusting for talent level, this game definitely showed some improvement in some key areas, but still aways to go in others. Duke’s perimeter defense is still a work in progress, at times it looks stout and impenetrable but others, especially on switch communication, it looked suspect – so there is definitely some work to be done on that end. The rebounding numbers as well as the effort were much stronger against Army, with Duke garnering a 48-27 advantage on the boards. Duke still gave up double-digit offensive rebounds to Army (10) but the majority of those were long rebounds off of errant 3-point shots.
In terms of the offense, I was ok with the bigs taking 3’s in the first half as they came within the flow of the offense, the shots in the second half – even with the high percentage that Duke shot overall, they seemed to come early in the shot clock and at times seemed to be the shot they were hunting. I think part of the growth of this team will be knowing when and where to shoot those, especially the bigs.
Next up for Duke is Indiana State, this is the last opportunity for Duke to get their perimeter defense in gear before a true game of consequence.