Duke didn’t just beat Coastal Carolina on Thursday night. The Blue Devils flattened the Chanticleers, rolling to a 113-52 win that marked the largest margin of victory of the Jon Scheyer era.
The start set the tone immediately. Duke raced out to a 16-0 lead before Coastal Carolina scored, and from there the game never really found a pulse. After an uneven opener against Army, this was the kind of complete performance Scheyer had to like.
The headliner was Patrick Ngongba. Big Pat put together a career night with 28 points, hitting 10 of 13 shots and going 2 of 3 from beyond the arc.
He also finished with nine rebounds and posted a plus-minus of +53, the best mark by any Duke player in any single game since 2014. Scheyer made it clear afterward that when Ngongba plays with that level of aggression, Duke is at its best.
Cayden Boozer kept making his own case as the team’s top point guard, even with Caleb Foster working back into form after missing preseason time with an injury. Boozer logged the first double-double of his career, finishing with 11 points and 12 assists against just one turnover.
It was also the first time a Duke player had reached 12 assists in a game since Tre Jones in 2019. Scheyer called Boozer’s passing “incredible,” and said he controlled the game with the way he chose when to score and when to distribute.
Foster, meanwhile, looked far more comfortable coming off the bench than he had in the exhibition against Kansas or in the opener against Army. He scored 15 points in 17 minutes, shooting 5 of 7 from the field and 3 of 4 from three-point range. His best sequence came after a Coastal Carolina player blocked his shot and talked back; Foster pointed at the scoreboard and then buried a three on the next possession.
John Blackwell also bounced back after a rough Duke debut. The Wisconsin transfer had managed just three points on 1-of-6 shooting against Army, and he opened this one 1 of 4 from the floor.
But Duke found him easier looks at the rim early in the second half, and that helped him settle in. He finished with 15 points on 5-of-9 shooting and looked much more like the player Duke expects him to be over time.
The one area that stood out for the wrong reasons was the free-throw line. Duke went 26 of 41 there, missing 15 attempts after shooting 22 of 26 against Army.
It didn’t matter in a 61-point blowout, but it’s the kind of thing that can come back to bite a team in a tight game. With Michigan State waiting Tuesday in Chicago, Duke will want that to look more like a one-night issue than the start of a problem.
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