No. 2 Duke gets another chance to find its offensive flow Thursday night, and this one comes with Coastal Carolina visiting Durham, N.C., after the Blue Devils showed both their ceiling and their rough edges in the opener.
Duke rolled past Army 84-50, but the game was hardly a clean 40-minute statement. The Blue Devils opened each half with double-digit scoring bursts, then hit stretches where the offense bogged down and the ball stopped moving the way Jon Scheyer wants.
With eight players seeing at least 18 minutes in the opener, Scheyer had plenty to sort through afterward.
"I know our team will learn and grow from this," Scheyer said. "We got to go get a second one on Thursday. You take it game by game, day by day."
One of the biggest issues was handling Army’s zone look. Duke had trouble settling in against it, and Scheyer made it clear that’s an area the staff wants cleaned up quickly.
"We were really stagnant," Scheyer said. "We don’t play zone so we haven’t worked on it as much in practice. ... We just need to get more organized."
The Blue Devils still had enough firepower to put Army away comfortably. Twelve Duke players scored, with Dame Sarr leading the way with 16 points. Freshman Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje added 15 points, seven rebounds and three blocked shots in his first college game, then pointed to the offense as a work in progress.
"We have to clean up areas on offense," Boumtje Boumtje said.
Scheyer said the bigger picture matters more than any one rough patch. He wants Duke’s scoring to come, but he’s focused on the rest of the package first.
"We aren’t looking for more scoring," Scheyer said. "We’re looking for more impact.
That can show up in different ways. I think scoring will be there at the end of the day.
We need to be on point in everything else."
Depth was part of what made Duke so difficult for Army to handle, and it helped fuel 24 turnovers. Scheyer said that versatility gives him room to keep rotating bodies and attack with athleticism.
"There’s no question, the depth of this team is going to win us a lot of games," Scheyer said.
The shooting, though, was a different story. Duke finished 4-for-22 from 3-point range, and guard John Blackwell, a transfer from Wisconsin, went 1-for-6 overall and 1-for-5 from beyond the arc. Blackwell said he had not had an opener that rough before, and he was back on the court shooting after the crowd left and the interviews were done.
Coastal Carolina arrives after a one-point loss of its own, falling 71-70 to Eastern Michigan on Monday despite Trey Perry’s 20 points. The Chanticleers shot just 7-for-24 from 3-point range, a number that hurt them in a game that slipped away at the end.
Coach Justin Gray said his team has to be ready to adjust once the game starts.
"We have a plan," Gray said. "Once we get into the game, we have to be able to adjust."
Coastal Carolina is also trying to replace a lot of production from last season’s 19-13 team, and Gray said the program’s standard remains the same.
"The motto is always the same," Gray said. "We want to make sure we’re representing the university in the right way."
Duke’s 33-game homecourt winning streak is the longest active run in the country, and Thursday gives the Blue Devils another shot to keep building while smoothing out the rough spots from opening night. Gray, now in his third season at Coastal Carolina, has been to Cameron Indoor Stadium before, including during his time as a Wake Forest player in ACC games against Duke.
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