MBB: Duke 71, California 56 (January 14-15, 2026) Postgame Thread

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Duke with the overnight delivery to their fans on the East Coast. The live stats become a box score.

Discuss the outcome here.




Edited to add: I include this link later in the thread, but it's worth mentioning at the top...

In case you missed the beginning, or the end, or all of it, here's the full replay from ACC Network.

 
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Yaaaaaa!!!

East coast checking in!!! Who’s still up?!?!

Great games from Robin in the first half, Batman in the second! Those who didn’t drink coffee at 5:00 PM will check the score in the morning and think it was a cake walk. Great west coast win for the Blue Devils!!!

Thank you heels for making sure we have our attention focused on Stanford, instead of Disneyland, or a tour of Alcatraz, or whatever one does when visiting California.
 
Start with a Heel loss, end with a Duke win, throw in a Boopie 50 foot buzzer beater…heck of a night.

The feed started with 12 to go in the first so I didn’t see all the early turnovers. Was glad to see us get that 7 point lead thanks to Slim’s scoring and that non-Cam line-up making stuff happen.

Once we stopped fouling in the second half, the D shored up and the advanced D stats should be really solid.

When Pat and Dame came out to set up the Cam/Caleb/Maliq/Nik/Slim line-up, we pulled away. Another example of an odd line-up that unlocked the win.

Slim +26. Nik +24. Cam’s second half was elite. Caleb shaking off a poor second half to play well after Cayden picked up #4 foul was huge.

This team has a knack for winning. We keep our heads in close games. We still haven’t played our A game.

Free throws? Well, it’s not all a bed of roses. Slim blamed the evolution ball in his postgame interview saying he likes the Nike.

Very very solid win. Great job, fellas!
 
it’s never the same 5 guys with their fastball, so I think it legit takes Jon the first half to figure out who has it and who doesn’t. I’ll be OK with the slow starts if we continue to have 2nd halves like this one. Tough as nails, this team competes. And if they can ever put together a consistent game from top to bottom — look out world.
 
Wow, Slim just threw shade on the Evolution game ball in the postgame interview. I was telling a friend during the Louisville game that that ball looks absolutely terrible.

I love the deep brown soft leathery balls. That Evolution Ball looks like some rubbery garbage.
 
Slim early and Cam late, with good contributions from Dame defensively and Caleb and Nik in the second half. Also good adjustment by the coaches to hedge vs double the ball screen and clean up the back line rotation as Cal was picking that apart in the first half.

Free throw shooting continues to be a concern. We were 0-2 on front ends of one and ones - I don't have the stats but it feels like we are shooting less than 50% on front ends this season.

Also Scheyer gave Cam much more rest in the first half than usual. I was worried he was under the weather but he was dominant in the second half.

A bit of a hard game to watch with all the whistles. Refs have to call those but it kills the flow (and I recognize some of the calls were especially bad tonight both ways).

Finally, terrible game from Wes Durham. Not knowing Cayden's foul situation, and messing up Ames's 5th foul twice (there was no call before that time out) - aren't there producers to help him with those things?
 
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