It's weird that these days Duke has played slow in league games even against fast-ish teams. The thing is, so far this season, we've played better in games with more than 71 possessions than we do in games with less than 69 possessions:
Code:
Gms Poss frc TO% D FB Adj oRat Adj dRat D TO% Opp FB
>71 8 74.62 23.1% 18.0 1.199 0.865 12.4% 10.5
<69 15 65.87 14.2% 8.5 1.177 0.905 17.1% 6.9
Keeping in mind that TO% is per possession, so in theory is pace independent, Duke has forced 23% in fast games but only 14% in slow games. But on offense, Duke's TO% is 12% in fast games and 17% in slow games. Obviously fast break points are going to happen more in fast games, but Duke's fast breaks are significantly better in fast games (18 to 8.5) than Duke's opponents' fast breaks are (10.5 to 7). Both our adjusted oRating and our adjusted dRating are better in fast games.
Having said all that, it's probable that there's something else going on, potentially unrelated to pace. All of our fast games occurred December 15 or earlier, mostly against inferior teams (the only fast games against good teams were against Kentucky and Gonzaga; Ohio State was neither above 71 nor below 69). And while the oRatings and dRatings in the above table are adjusted, it's very possible they weren't adjusted quite enough against overmatched teams. And the TO% and fast break numbers in the above table are unadjusted for competition.
More evidence that pace may not be the real reason for the above differences is that in three slow games before the Covid Pause, our forced TO% was 16.9% while in the 12 slow games after the pause, our forced TO% was only 13.5%. Though that might just be noise, since three games is such a very small sample and 16.9% is still a lot worse than our forced TO% in fast games.
The disappearance of our fast break game is even stranger. In our 16 games on or before January 15, we averaged 15.9 fast break points per game, fast or slow. In our first 4 slow-paced ACC games after the Covid pause, we averaged 14.3 fast break points per game. However in our 9 games after January 15, we've averaged a mere 4.8 fast break points per 40 minute game.
I'd feel a lot better about the rest of our season if we started forcing more turnovers and getting more fast break points. What's actually going on here, I have no idea, but it will be interesting to see if we can play a faster game against Wake Forest, which is usually one of the two fastest teams in the ACC, and if we do whether we follow the above trends.