MBB: Duke 76, L'ville 65 Post Game Thread

Team was sleepwalking through the first 30 minutes, but Louisville came back to earth and our talent took over. Thanks goodness for the vets and the portal guys; we needed everyone to pull this one out. Kon's three followed by Sion attacking the rim twice felt like we finally took control and didn't look back.

Our half court offense is still a struggle. I don't think it's a coincidence that we took off when Flagg went out with his fourth. Obviously he is an unreal individual talent but we need to figure out how to keep others involved instead of standing and watching.

Big relief to get a W despite playing a C- game against a pretty good team on the road. Kansas fans can attest to the fact that a win is not a given.
 
Horrific first half, and it wasn’t as simple as “the first road game is always tough” or “they were just making all their threes”. Everyone on our team was a step slow, including Cooper, and Evans and Maluach looked especially lost on defense (and ended up on the bench for the second half).

Once the defense started generating turnovers things gradually improved, but the halfcourt offense still looked turgid until Cooper left the game, when suddenly the small lineup started playing freer with a more open floor, and players actually started moving without the ball, driving and taking shots confidently (that stepback by Kon was wicked)

Kudos to Proctor and Brown - Tyrese kept us in it when the halfcourt offense was mostly underwater trying to generate good looks, and Brown is just a ridiculous stud defensively and did his part on offense.

I hope this thread doesn’t degenerate into another referendum on the coaching, which I almost always avoid. But I do wonder whether there isn’t a better way to do things than have Cooper attack the defense as if he’s Paolo or Zion — he’s a freak of nature but this is yet another game where it looked too easy for the defense to send extra defenders at him and gap him effectively.

Things did seem to work better later in the game when he attacked the left side of the floor — with shooting on the other side and some player and ball movement to tilt the defense to the other side — so Cooper had a better angle to attack. Clearly a work in progress for Scheyer to figure out over the course of the season.
 
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Maliq Brown should start. He is the catalyst to make this team execute. This is the first game Gillis for me showed his value. Every one can play better. The first 30 minutes was not good enough for the talent Duke has. I agree with ScottDude8 in that Khaman needs to be benched. Evans did not make a shot but he needs to play. I don’t want to see the first 4 minutes of every game with Duke unable to produce points.
 
5 thoughts...

1. I was never really worried in this game. Ville hit a ridiculous amount of 3's early - crazy shots. I felt that couldn't last. And it didn't. Was I annoyed at first? Yes. Worried? No... In the end, up by double digits with 2 minutes left, cruising to the win. But any ACC road win is a big win.

2. Flagg produces again, a 20-10 game. He was key in Duke catching up (though the run without him was just as impressive). I really want to pick James or Brown as MOTM, but I honestly can't. The guy is still only 17, right? And he plays like this? Wow. Those drives and that put back dunk in traffic were so tough.

3. Brown was a rebounding magnet. So many stops ended with him getting the board. And this game he contributed points. I don't know if the reason Maluach didn't get much 2nd half play was Brown or not, but the formula worked... James' play was also impressive. He's so strong. But the best thing about his game this game to me was 6-6 from the line. I hope he's put his Tulane days at the line well in the past (he wasn't so great in years past)... Proctor also hit some tough, tough shots in the lane.

4. Evans cooled down, and they picked on him a bit in the 1st half defensively. He still needs to learn positioning. I understand he's focusing on that. Good. There will be more games where Duke will need him to ignite a fire.

5. My most favorite stat of this game (besides the W)? 12-14 as a team from the line. My worst stat of this game? Tie between poor 3-point shooting (27%) and only outrebounding the shorter Cards by 1. Kind of glad 2 (relatively) easy games are coming up. Time to work on a few things before the Tech game.

9F
 
DBR Bites talked about things to improve:

1. Don't get way behind to in the first 5 minutes - We didn't improve
2. It seems shoot 3's better against us - They were shooting better than 60% early in the game
3. Like to see Maluach do more rebounding - He wasn't doing much and we went to a small lineup
4. Like to see better 3 point shooting - Duke was anything but good

Still we won after trailing the entire first half. I agree that the Maliq, Cooper Scion, Kon and Tyrese got us there with intensity, tough defense, valuing the ball (5 to's to their 14. Our experienced players really contributed.

We beat a very experienced team on the road and more than covered tonight. Good for us but a lot to work on.
 
Metrics

Rough first half, thanks to some otherworldly shooting by Louisville and some sub-par shooting by our guys. Second half, water found its level (eventually). Gritty effort in a choppy game with a weird flow (the officiating was light in the first, tight in the second). But a double-digit road win is never something to scoff at.

OFFENSE
Possessions: 67.3 (a slightly slow pace)
oRtg: 112.9 (116.9 adjusted; would be #23 in the country by a mile)
eFG%: 51.6% (okay)
3pt%: 26.7% (bad)
2pt%: 62.5% (excellent)
%threes: 48.4% (a high percentage, especially given how poorly we shot it)
FT rate: 22.6% (bad)
OR%: 25.7% (not good)
TO%: 10.4% (very good)
a/to: 1.86 (solid)
%assisted: 46.4% (okay)
fast break pts: 12 (okay)

DEFENSE
dRtg: 96.6 (94.8 adjusted; would be #10 in the country)
eFG%: 48.0% (good)
3pt%: 35.5% (not great)
2pt%: 40.0% (excellent)
%threes: 60.8% (wow, they make us look shy from 3!)
FT rate: 41.2% (not great)
DR%: 76.5% (good)
TO%: 22.3 (good)
a/to: 0.67 (excellent)
%assisted: 52.6% (poor, but it's because they didn't make many shots)
stl%: 10.4% (decent)
blk%: 15.0% (2pt shots) (good)
fast break pts: 3 (excellent)

Not a shooting display, but we did a really good job of getting high-quality 2pt shots tonight. It was nice to see us getting easy baskets at times. Especially after a clunker of a first half offensively. The defense played fairly well throughout, but Louisville hit 3s in the first half and didn't in the second. Also nice to see the team able to largely put Louisville away with Flagg on the bench. Gonna need that confidence that we don't have to rely on him.
 
goduke03861 said:
I was hoping that after the offensive performance against Auburn, Duke would understand what works best on offense, unfortunately for 32 mins we reverted to the jacking up tons of 3s. Thankfully the light bulb went off with 8 mins left to drive the ball and we ran away from them. CJS needs to impress upon this team to just drive the damn ball and save this Celtics 3 point crap for when they collect a paycheck in the league.
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The offense may have been good but shots didn’t fall. Kind of like flipping tails times in a row
 
Other than that absurd 3 he shot off the top of the backboard this was Caleb’s second straight strong game IMO. Gaining more confidence driving the ball and hit a couple of catch and shoots too.
 
Welp. We talked about it after the last game, so here goes. Anyone complaining about a double digit road win ain't never had to go get one. Complain if you want. But if you've never had to dig deep on the road and grind one out, you simply have no idea what you're talking about. Great win.
 
The key to unlocking our #1 offense may be sitting in the film room with Cooper and watching how our offense flowed for those 7-8 minutes when he was out of the game. Guys were getting great shots.

We need less of the early shot clock ISO-Cooper midrange game and more of the attack-the-rim-Cooper in the flow of the offense. IMHO. But I'm not complaining. Great road win. Great team performance.
 
Alan_Wilson said:
Someone is going to say "oh look at all the people crying about the offense well we won"... the offense tonight is not acceptable and emblematic of bigger problems. Kon shooting 9 threes is unacceptable. Tyrese with one assist is unacceptable. Malauch simply not having a role on the offense at all is unacceptable. This team is too talented to stand around the arc and shoot threes all night until one goes in.
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Couldn't have been too bad. Our kenpom O-rating went up from this afternoon to after tonight's game. Our D-rating, too.

-jk
 
tommy said:
Other than that absurd 3 he shot off the top of the backboard this was Caleb’s second straight strong game IMO. Gaining more confidence driving the ball and hit a couple of catch and shoots too.
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Was that shot deflected? Seemed like it might have been
 
I’m not sure I can keep watching these first 20 minutes….not sure whether it is stress or frustration, but it definitely curbs the dinner appetite.

That said, the comeback was invigorating. Why don’t we just start all games 12 points in the hole and just play the second half.
 
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