MBB: Duke 106, Stanford 70 - Postgame thread

I am as giddy as everyone else around here, and I'll add:

We shot 63% from the field, 48% from 3, 92% from the line with 23 assists to 5 TOs.

~Wow~

Yes, the ACC is not good, but we are plowing through the conference like we haven't since 1998-99. It is starting to look that dominant. With a few games behind us, the Clemson loss still adheres to my initial impressions: Cooper was sick, Clemson was hitting some really tough shots, and that was one of the games we brought Gillis in for, and he was unavailable. Clemson is also starting to look like a legit top 15-20 team.

This Duke team is obviously special: the defense, the offense, Cooper.

I have high hopes every year for March, but I am more bullish that usual this season... 2011, 2015, 2019 bullishness levels.
 
kAzE said:
And on the subject of guys looking to score, that 6 minute stretch from Caleb Foster is peak Caleb Foster. This guy was really miscast as a point guard for this team. His instincts when being asked to be a distributor are completely wrong, and so you get a guy who is just thinking too much every time he has the ball instead of doing the thing he's actually good at, which is getting buckets.
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Ironic that the board spent the summer wondering how Proctor and Foster would split point guard duties (and before that, speculated that one would transfer because of the other’s presence at that position). Turns out neither is a natural point, and we are better with both playing off-ball.
 
Duke 106, Stanford 70 (recap, box score, highlights, condensed game, full replay, presser)

Tyrese Proctor scored 23 points, matching a season high, to lead Duke past Stanford, 106-70, on Saturday, Feb. 15. The Blue Devils (22-3, 14-1 ACC) finished with five players in double-figures and eclipsed 100 points in a regulation ACC contest for the first time since a 100-93 victory over Florida State on Dec. 30, 2017. The 106 total points are the most scored by a Duke team in an ACC contest since the Blue Devils defeated Georgia Tech, 110-57, on Jan. 4, 2017.

Proctor finished the afternoon shooting 9-of-13 (.692) from the field, including 5-of-8 (.625) from deep, matching a career high for made three-pointers. Cooper Flagg added 19 points and Khaman Maluach contributed 17 points on 8-of-9 (.889) shooting, fueled by seven dunks. Sion James finished with a season-high 14 points and Caleb Foster rounded out Duke's double-digit scoring, chipping in 10.

As a team, Duke dished 23 assists while committing only five turnovers, good for a 4.6 assist-turnover ratio, a single-game high for Duke this season. Flagg and James each ended the contest with six dimes and Maluach grabbed a six rebounds to lead the team.

ESPN highlights, plus Duke MBB's Every Bucket video.



ACC Digital Network has highlight reels for Tyrese Proctor and Cooper Flagg.


Carolina Blitz has Jon Scheyer's postgame comments on YouTube. GoDuke has quotes.


Coach Scheyer: "I thought it was a great overall game by our guys. Thought the readiness was really good. Obviously, I think the shots came from great sharing and great pace on offense. By the way, Jaylen [Blakes] is Duke family. Jaylen, he's graduated from Duke in three years. He's not going to be in a bad position, getting his undergrad from Duke and graduate degree from Stanford. But this is the only game I was rooting against him. Besides that, he's given our program so much for three years. Obviously, also having Dickie V [Dick Vitale ]back here was an incredible thing. I know before the game, he came out and rang the bell – just to cherish him and the fact of him being back in Cameron Indoor Stadium was an awesome thing. Tyrese [Proctor], on offense, what he's doing, I think the sharing and connecting is what stands out to me. Sion [James], what he did the whole game, 14 [points] and 6 [assists]. I thought guys made the right play. And then defensively, I thought it was a better game for us. I thought that was more how it should be with Duke defense. [Maxime] Raynaud is a tough cover. They do some really good things for him, but the fact that he scored 19 and had 21 shots, that's really what you want. Obviously, it's a quick turnaround, and we need to get recovered and rested, but really proud of our guys and the effort today."

Cardinal head coach Kyle Smith's presser is on the GoStanford website; sorry, I can't embed it.

Coach Smith: "I think [Duke] brought help from everywhere, and they're also really big, and they're one of the top teams, if not the top team in the country, defensively around the rim."

Finally, The Devils Den has locker room interviews with Cooper Flagg, Sion James, Kon Knueppel, and Khaman Maluach.

 
DrChainsaw said:
So, the front page mentions some sort of interaction between coaches at the end of the first half. Perhaps this was already covered in the in-game chat, but can anyone offer details?
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I was hoping someone else saw what started the confrontation but from my seat, I only caught the middle/tail end. I was watching the players and then the staff head to the locker room giving high fives all the way, and realized I hadn’t seen Coach yet, then finally found him between the scorers table and mid-court with all the refs and maybe a couple extra officials separating him from Stanford’s head coach, who was talking angrily, being restrained and looked quite unhappy. Scheyer’s hands looked a bit like this 🤷🏼‍ and he was visibly exasperated. After 5 or so more seconds of this, he reached around a ref and gave a bit of a conciliatory tap to Stanford’s coach or maybe an effort at an awkward handshake and they went on their ways.

Would love to hear from someone who saw how it started or some insight as to what caused the ruckus.
 
Dr. Maturin said:
I think Jon has done an amazing job with this team. But... I think he clearly got it wrong with his vision for the Foster/Proctor backcourt. Credit to Tyrese for accepting his off-ball role and improving his 3-point shooting. But our offense is much more dynamic when he is attacking off the dribble. The staff seems to be adding wrinkles to our offense. In January, we added more Kon-initiated sets. In February, we've incorporated more actions for Tyrese. Exciting stuff.
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Caleb played 25 minutes per game as a freshman. Not sure how anyone could have anticipated his apparent mental issues this season.
 
Don't look now, but Flagg now has a better 3FG% than Knueppel (by 0.1%). I like the way Kon hunts for shots at the rim or passes for lob dunks, and how he uses his hieght and strength to get enough separation for a variety of short jumpers. He obviously has a nice 3pt shot, but he has been missing "lots" of wide-open 3s. In fact, I don't recall Kon taking hardly any "bad" 3s. I remember a couple that were pretty well contested that either looked very open when he got the ball or were late in the shot clock, but he just doesn't take truly bad 3s.
I was very critical of Flagg earlier this year, and even opined that he should stop taking them. Glad he didn't listen to me! His 3pt diet has changed a bit, and/or the team is looking to get him the ball at the 3pt line in different ways. He's no longer taking those dribble-into-the-3 shots, and almost all of them come off of a screen or some other action to get him a catch and shoot look. He is so much better from 3 off those plays.
 
trinity92 said:
I was hoping someone else saw what started the confrontation but from my seat, I only caught the middle/tail end. I was watching the players and then the staff head to the locker room giving high fives all the way, and realized I hadn’t seen Coach yet, then finally found him between the scorers table and mid-court with all the refs and maybe a couple extra officials separating him from Stanford’s head coach, who was talking angrily, being restrained and looked quite unhappy. Scheyer’s hands looked a bit like this 🤷🏼‍ and he was visibly exasperated. After 5 or so more seconds of this, he reached around a ref and gave a bit of a conciliatory tap to Stanford’s coach or maybe an effort at an awkward handshake and they went on their ways.

Would love to hear from someone who saw how it started or some insight as to what caused the ruckus.
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Could Smith have thought that Duke had run up the score unnecessarily?
 
gaap said:
Caleb played 25 minutes per game as a freshman. Not sure how anyone could have anticipated his apparent mental issues this season.
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By "mental issues" do you mean confidence?

If that's what you mean, and I hope it is, I think it's mainly a matter of confidence in his shot. He is quite concerned about taking 3s, at least in a competitive game. He looked pretty free and easy with his shot yesterday, but the game wasn't close.

Some of this may have to do with his injury last season and his recovery after surgery.
 
MChambers said:
By "mental issues" do you mean confidence?

If that's what you mean, and I hope it is, I think it's mainly a matter of confidence in his shot. He is quite concerned about taking 3s, at least in a competitive game. He looked pretty free and easy with his shot yesterday, but the game wasn't close.

Some of this may have to do with his injury last season and his recovery after surgery.
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To my eyes, Caleb Foster has always played a lot like Jeremy Roach. He is looking to score, not pass. I think Jon was trying to turn him into more of a pure point guard, looking pass first, but it ended up causing him to overthink everything. He was an outstanding spot-up shooter toward the end of last season, but in the PG role he seemed so intent on trying to analyze that he lost his aggression and couldn't just smoothly pull the trigger when he was open.

I could be completely wrong about that, of course, and I don't want to "blame Jon" for Caleb's issues. I still think Caleb can still build on this year and ultimately be a much better player for having gone through this experiment. But I do think that Caleb is miscast as a PG. On the other hand, I think he can be really good at being a shooting guard (when he's not playing next to someone like Tyrese who is even better at it).
 
DukieInBrasil said:
Don't look now, but Flagg now has a better 3FG% than Knueppel (by 0.1%). I like the way Kon hunts for shots at the rim or passes for lob dunks, and how he uses his hieght and strength to get enough separation for a variety of short jumpers. He obviously has a nice 3pt shot, but he has been missing "lots" of wide-open 3s. In fact, I don't recall Kon taking hardly any "bad" 3s. I remember a couple that were pretty well contested that either looked very open when he got the ball or were late in the shot clock, but he just doesn't take truly bad 3s.
I was very critical of Flagg earlier this year, and even opined that he should stop taking them. Glad he didn't listen to me! His 3pt diet has changed a bit, and/or the team is looking to get him the ball at the 3pt line in different ways. He's no longer taking those dribble-into-the-3 shots, and almost all of them come off of a screen or some other action to get him a catch and shoot look. He is so much better from 3 off those plays.
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Really good point. Who would have guessed Cooper would be shooting better than Kon at this point? Mystery is whether Kon is in a slump or this is actually his normal shooting average. From all accounts this summer, expecting him to shoot above 40% from 3 this year wasn’t unreasonable. I’m holding hope he gets better from three. No question he is at least taking good open shots, just missing them right now.
 
SkyBrickey said:
My one little nit from today is their 13 offensive rebounds. Felt like even more. Teams are successfully crashing the boards on us.
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My impression is that at least part of the reason for that was that Stanford was missing badly (because of good defense), and the rebounds often went long.

On the season, Duke is #34 in DR%, according to T-rank, so it's not a major weakness.
 
FastBreak said:
Really good point. Who would have guessed Cooper would be shooting better than Kon at this point? Mystery is whether Kon is in a slump or this is actually his normal shooting average. From all accounts this summer, expecting him to shoot above 40% from 3 this year wasn’t unreasonable. I’m holding hope he gets better from three. No question he is at least taking good open shots, just missing them right now.
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Ironically, Kon is shooting better than Coop from 2 - albeit on much lower (but still significant) usage. Pretty impressive.
MChambers said:
My impression is that at least part of the reason for that was that Stanford was missing badly (because of good defense), and the rebounds often went long.

On the season, Duke is #34 in DR%, according to T-rank, so it's not a major weakness.
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While true, Duke is #308 in DR% in the month of February (5 games) per Torvik.

Small sample size of course but… that’s a cluster of games in which the DReb has not been great. UNC, Syracuse and Clemson were all subpar defensive rebounding efforts.

But Duke is also #1 in the country overall in that time period so 🤷‍♂️
 
arydolphin said:
Alexandra, for his ex-girlfriend. Like the Cameron of old with a chant like that.

A historically great offensive performance today, 2nd best points per possession of all time. We saw the absolute offensive peak of this team today. Great to see how much they used the lobs to Khaman on the pick and roll, would love to see that more going forward.

Great to see Foster get some good minutes at the end of the game....but there's now an 8 man rotation and he's not in it. The emergence of Proctor and the importance of James, especially on the defensive end, has made it that way. Maybe he gets a few minutes in place of Evans in a game where the ball handlers get in foul trouble, but I think that's about the only scenario I can see where Foster would be a factor in tight games going forward.
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I watched both pressers; no one asked about Smith's halftime explosion. Just a wild guess, but maybe he was upset by the crazies' Alexandra chant?
 
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