MBB: Duke 93, NC State 64 (March 2, 2026) Postgame Thread

FastBreak said:
Can’t help to wonder if this year’s more experienced CJS and staff had been coaching last year’s team how different a season it could have been.
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It's an interesting "what if" question for sure. I mean, to be fair, last year's team did unbelievably well. They won the ACC regular season, they won the ACC title, and they probably should have won the NCAA title, but for a cataclysmic end in the Final Four after dominating for about 37 minutes. We've of course had two similar losses to that Final Four loss this year, so it's possible the same result would have happened.

One advantage this year's team has, despite not having nearly the same level of NBA talent depth, is that Cam is a much more dominant offensive player than Flagg, and a better rebounder. Flagg is more run/jump athletic and more versatile defensively, but Cam's physicality is pretty imposing and he's harder to get off his game at the college level. Flagg has the higher ceiling, but Boozer's physicality has him as a more productive player.

If anything, we probably underutilized Knueppel last year. He's sort of the guard/wing version of Cam, if you will. We definitely needed to get the ball to him late in that Houston game, and let him finish. Ah, the "what if" game. Hopefully this year we get another shot late in the tournament, and hopefully this time the staff and team come through.
 
I am running out of words to describe how awesome this team is. Going into the season, I thought this team had the potential to be very good, but I didn't expect them to be this great. Cam, who I thought would be great, is even better than I expected. Slim is a complete player now. After a dismal sophomore season, Caleb is having a fantastic junior year. Dame is a force on the defensive end and is capable of having moments on the offensive end. Jon (or CJS or Coach S or whatever your shorthand may be) is getting better each season.

I don't have the disdain for State as I do for UNC, but beating them in their building is immensely satisfying.

Well, I guess I found a few words.
 
gep said:
So... regular ACC regular season champs. I LOVE IT!!!. I know many say that the unbalanced schedules makes the regular season champs less meaningful. But others rightfully say that ACC road games are killers. So if ACC road games are so hard, shouldn't that offset the unbalanced schedule? Because of that, the ACC regular season championship is still hignly valued by me. :cool:
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The unbalanced schedule has more to do with who you play, not where you play. Although there is some relationship between the two, I don’t think they offset.
 
Dr. Maturin said:
I've been in the house for our last two games at NC State, plus the two NCAAT games there last year. Maybe I'm the good luck charm. Or maybe it's just not a house of horrors anymore.

  • What makes this team special is the ability to problem-solve in real time. Scouts have raved about that with Cam, and how he is able to solve different coverages. But give Jon a ton of credit for his ability to adjust. I'm not sure we expected to face a zone, but we solved it. After jacking some 3s early and occasionally getting sped up in transition, we settled down and started playing inside-out.
  • The adjustments were even better on defense. In the pregame, I speculated on how much Jon would adjust to State's 3-point happy offense. We honestly looked pretty rough in the early going. State was getting wide open 3s. Jon adjusted, and we started switching on defense. When we did that, their 3s dried up, and they had nothing. The ability to switch defenses and adjust to matchups is going to be huge in the Tournament.
  • Duke attempted 58 field goals last night. Per Torvik's definition, 31 came at the rim. 28 came from 3. Duke did not attempt a single midrange shot.
  • I thought Will Wade's comments were interesting. He talked about Duke being an all-around impressive operation, down to little details like players sprinting to the scorer's table. Jon's focus on culture and attention to detail is seriously impressive.
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This 1000%. And this is really what higher education is expected to do, right? Equip your students with the proper tools to effectively figure things out on their own, without your needing to be present every step of the way. Professor Scheyer indeed!!
 
FastBreak said:
Can’t help to wonder if this year’s more experienced CJS and staff had been coaching last year’s team how different a season it could have been.
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Good speculation. it's a totally unanswerable "what if" but I don't think it's a stretch to say we would have closed better. And another reason why the best, coachable players will (hopefully) still want to come to Duke. Jon is only 38 and getting better by the game.
 
WOW. What a performance! I had this one penciled in as a loss earlier this season and fully expected a nail-biter more recently. Shows you what I know.

Cam has become one of my top handful of favorite Duke players all-time. Has anyone in Duke history used their off-hand to score more efficiently and effectively? Has anyone in Duke history been so consistently great across the board? Even his "bad" games are tremendous by most standards. What an exceptional player and young man! Coop, Kon, Cam, and all our other excellent players in the last two seasons alone -- we are spoiled beyond measure.

Can't wait till Saturday and hoping Caleb Wilson plays. LFG!
 
Kedsy said:
Isaiah Evans is now shooting 39.1% from three in calendar 2026.
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roywhite said:
And his shot selection is visibly improved.

I'd attribute that to good coaching and a good player like Evans willing to take coaching.
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CDu said:
And all of the above while seeing his shot volume increase. Evans has taken 7.5 attempts per game in 2026, which is up from his season average of 7.1. And over the last 7 games, he has attempted even a bit more at 7.6 per game.

Scheyer talked earlier this year about needing to help Evans out by getting him better looks. Kudos to the coaches for making that happen in spades. And of course kudos to Evans for making it pay off.
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IMO the biggest change has been the change in shots available to Evans, not his shot selection. As CDU notes, Isaiah is shooting more (on the same MPG, by the way) threes now than he was early. I don’t think any of us thinks Isaiah was passing up a lot of open threes early in the season. If 1) he’s shooting more threes now and 2) the threes he’s taking are better shots and 3) he wasn’t previously passing up open threes, that means 4) there are better shots available to him now than there were then. This is no doubt in part, as CDU notes, because of strategic changes the coaching staff has made. IMO it’s also in part due to offensive growth from the rest of the team.

To be clear: I’m not saying Isaiah isn’t taking better shots than he was early. I’m saying that to the extent he is taking better shots than he was early, it’s largely because he’s able to take better shots than he was early.

Here’s a post from January 7:
Western said:
Other teams plan their defensive approaches to Duke around 1) Cam Boozer; 2) Isaiah Evans. We know this is true in general because of course it is, and because we see the results of it. And we know this about Louisville because last night the broadcasters told us that Louisville talked a ton about Evans during their practices leading up to the game. And because we saw the results of it. This is the spacing benefit Evans provides his teammates by taking all those threes some folks wanted him to stop taking. Caleb (and his teammates, and his coaches) did an outstanding job taking advantage of the opportunity for Caleb’s drives that was provided by him being, at most, a distant third on Louisville defensive priority list.

My hope has been that as other players begin to establish themselves offensively as a result of the opportunities they get when defenses are so focused on Cam & Isaiah that will in turn open things up for Isaiah & Cam.
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TL;DR: Basketball is not five simultaneous one-on-one games. Things are connected.
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Isaiah probably took more tough threes early in the season than he is taking now. That wasn’t a mistake; it was because his offense was more advanced than that of his (non-Cam) teammates (and than the offense the coaches had had time to design and implement) and the team needed him to take those shots. His teammates and Duke’s offense are both more advanced now than they were then, so he’s getting better shots. That plus the general variability of three point shooting swinging in his favor recently has more folks noticing what has always been true and opponents have always been aware of: Isaiah Evans is an excellent three point shooter. I’m glad he and the coaching staff declined to take the advice of those who wanted to turn him into a low-volume shooter.

In conference games Isaiah is taking 28 percent of Duke’s shots while he’s on the court (12th highest in the conference) with a TS% of 63.1% (10th highest in the conference.) His combination of shot volume and efficiency is quite uncommon. The only Duke players with comparable shooting volume+efficiency in conference play since Zion are Cameron Boozer, Cooper Flagg, arguably Matthew Hurt (24.8 shot%), and Vernon Carey.

In part because he’s playing alongside Cam Boozer and in part because people want three point shooting to be less variable than it is, Isaiah Evans is putting up one of the more underrated scoring seasons in recent memory.
 
CDu said:
He's such a weird case. Defensively, he's elite. That skill set will play. Offensively... he's one of the worst ballhandling wings I've seen at Duke in as far back as I can remember. Like, if he dribbles anywhere near a defender, I fear he's losing the ball. And he can't play through contact.
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The thing about Sarr that confounds me is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player whose drives to the basket in transition (and in half-court but it’s more glaring in transition) so frequently conclude with him taking off a full step too far from the basket. It seems like this is a factor in 80 percent of his awkward finishes, successful and unsuccessful alike. I’ve been trying all season to come up with a transition-from-European-basketball explanation for this, without success. I have to think this is fixable; he doesn’t seem to entirely lack offensive basketball instincts or skill.
 
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CDu said:
He's such a weird case. Defensively, he's elite. That skill set will play. Offensively... he's one of the worst ballhandling wings I've seen at Duke in as far back as I can remember. Like, if he dribbles anywhere near a defender, I fear he's losing the ball. And he can't play through contact. When he's making 3s, it's obvious his NBA fit. But even there, it's been an adventure from game to game.

If a team feels confident they can hone in on his 3pt shooting consistency quickly, then yeah he's got a clear NBA role as a "3 and D" wing. But if he remains an unreliable shooter along with his complete absence of ballhandling ability or finishing in the lane, I'm not sure how playable his defense is.

I'm sure someone will draft him, but it feels like a 2nd round pick is most likely unless he continues to show a more consistently usable 3pt shot.
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Lurkingdukedog said:
He's actually knocked down two threes in the past two games that were NOT corner threes. . .
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I noticed that three from the top of the key last night and was impressed. Sarr also hit a three from the elbow in a recent game. I think against Notre Dame.

I used to cringe if he took any shot other than the corner three. It seems Sarr can now (mostly) finish at the rim and shoot threes from a variety of spots. In the post game press conference last night, CJS (sorry, not sorry) alluded to the work that Sarr has been putting in on a daily basis.

Sarr still has that Casey Sanders quality where I think he's gonna just fold over and collapse. Like his legs and torso are connected by slinkies. If he can get his core strength to the next level, he could be a great role player for many years in the league.
 
DUKIE V(A) said:
Cam has become one of my top handful of favorite Duke players all-time. Has anyone in Duke history used their off-hand to score more efficiently and effectively? Has anyone in Duke history been so consistently great across the board? Even his "bad" games are tremendous by most standards. What an exceptional player and young man! Coop, Kon, Cam, and all our other excellent players in the last two seasons alone -- we are spoiled beyond measure.

Can't wait till Saturday and hoping Caleb Wilson plays. LFG!
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Kyrie?

I agree that Cam is great. He just passed The Landlord for 12th place on the Duke single season scoring record with 679 points.

Cam would need 101 points slide into third place, with 780 points for the season, which seems highly likely if we make the Sweet 16.
 
Edouble said:
Sarr still has that Casey Sanders quality where I think he's gonna just fold over and collapse. Like his legs and torso are connected by slinkies. If he can get his core strength to the next level, he could be a great role player for many years in the league.
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Yes, Casey Sanders is exactly who I think of when I see Sarr in traffic. Obviously Sarr is much more skilled than Sanders was, but in this particular attribute I think Sarr is very much the guard/wing version of Sanders. Just a complete inability to play through contact. Which is strange, as he came from playing with/against adult pros in probably the best non-NBA league.

The aggregate player Sarr is is really useful at the college level. It's just confounding that he's sooooo awkward when introduced to any sort of contact with a defender.
 
Western said:
The thing about Sarr that confounds me is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player whose drives to the basket in transition (and in half-court but it’s more glaring in transition) so frequently conclude with him taking off a full step too far from the basket. It seems like this is a factor in 80 percent of his awkward finishes, successful and unsuccessful alike. I’ve been trying all season to come up with a transition-from-European-basketball explanation for this, without success. I have to think this is fixable; he doesn’t seem to entirely lack offensive basketball instincts or skill.
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Yeah, he's not smooth at all when he attacks the basket. He had dunks in the last two games where he barely got up high enough to finish the dunk. Clearly it's not an athleticism issue, but one of footwork, etc. I think it's something that will largely be solved by more high level reps.
 
azzefkram said:
I am running out of words to describe how awesome this team is. Going into the season, I thought this team had the potential to be very good, but I didn't expect them to be this great. Cam, who I thought would be great, is even better than I expected. Slim is a complete player now. After a dismal sophomore season, Caleb is having a fantastic junior year. Dame is a force on the defensive end and is capable of having moments on the offensive end. Jon (or CJS or Coach S or whatever your shorthand may be) is getting better each season.

I don't have the disdain for State as I do for UNC, but beating them in their building is immensely satisfying.

Well, I guess I found a few words.
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I like Jon. No confusion.
 
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