Duke finally had a chance to breathe, then get back to the part of the game that’s been giving it the most trouble.
After a day off Thursday, the Blue Devils returned to the gym Friday and, according to freshman guard Gary Trent Jr., spent time working on defensive slides and schemes. That was welcome news for a team that has spent most of the last stretch surviving on offense.
Duke is 9-0 and owns the nation’s most efficient offense, according to kenpom.com, scoring 122.1 points per 100 possessions. But the defense has been leaking points, especially in the paint, and the recent trip to Portland made that hard to ignore.
Trent described the road swing as “mentally and emotionally draining” after a run of big comeback wins. Coming home was “great,” he said, not simply because the team could rest after four games in seven days, but because it could finally focus on the defensive end.
That’s where the concern has been building. In all three games of the PK80 tournament last week - against Portland State, Texas and Florida - Duke trailed at halftime.
The offense kept humming, but so did the opponents. Interior scoring has been the biggest issue, with teams finding ways to challenge the Blue Devils near the rim, on the glass and in transition.
Duke’s frontline features two of the country’s top big men in Marvin Bagley and Wendell Carter, but opponents have still been able to hold their own, or better, in the paint. Texas put up 48 points there in Duke’s 85-78 overtime win, with Duke finishing at 50.
Florida scored 34 points in the paint in Duke’s 87-84 victory, while the Blue Devils had 38. Indiana also edged Duke inside, 46-44.
“For myself, just really trying to lock in defensively,” Trent said. “After a shot goes up just trying to box out, trying to be good with on ball defense and simply as a team just trying to pack in the lane.”
Senior guard Grayson Allen said he came away encouraged by the way Duke handled those games, even if the starts weren’t clean. The Blue Devils still found a way to win.
“Even though we can play a lot better, especially defensively, at the end of the day, we still figured it out and we don’t have to learn the hard way by losing,” Allen said.
The lack of practice time has been part of the problem. Duke has played nine games in 20 days, including three in four days last week. Coach Mike Krzyzewski said after Wednesday’s game that fatigue has been showing up in the team’s communication on defense.
“Especially guys when they’re tired, they don’t talk,” Krzyzewski said. “They talk to themselves, and that’s how we played most of the game. We wanted to win, but we were in like ‘this is what I have to do,’ instead of ‘this is what we have to do.’
“And when you talk, you command to yourself to more decisive movements. You might switch and don’t talk and its soft. But if you yell and command ‘switch,’ then your body responds.”
Krzyzewski said that’s one of the habits the staff has to keep teaching.
Duke returns to Cameron Indoor Stadium on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. against South Dakota, which is 7-2 and allowing 63.7 points per game, good for 43rd in the country.
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