Small mistakes difference between winning, losing for Duke

From the minute Amile Jefferson’s broken foot became public knowledge, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said nothing would come easy for the Blue Devils.

For his young team, to hear that was one thing. To live it is another.

“Collectively, as a team, we’ve been surprised by it,” sophomore guard Grayson Allen said. “Coach has been telling us this. He has been telling us it’s tough. He has been telling us that we are going to be in tough games every night, we’re shorthanded, and we’re going to have to fight. Nothing is going to be easy.

“We can’t just come out expecting, oh, we lost a tough one, now the next one is going to be easy. That’s not how it works in the ACC. We have to come out ready to fight each and every night.”

Duke (14-4, 3-2 ACC) has little time to shake off the loss to Notre Dame and prepare for Syracuse (12-7, 2-4) Monday night at 7 p.m. And as the back-to-back losses to Clemson (68-63) and the Fighting Irish (95-91) have proven, the Blue Devils have no margin for error. Small mistakes here and there – a bad shot early in the shot clock, a failed rebounding attempt – have been the difference between winning and losing.

“I have said this since Amile got out, the margin between us winning and losing is narrow and we are a good team, but we are not that good,” Krzyzewski said. “We are called Duke and we are coached by me, and we need to realize who we are in our attention to detail at little things, we have to get better.”

Duke has to somehow get sharper while also avoiding fatigue. The six-man rotation the Blue Devils are using asks an awful lot of all six, including three freshmen who have never had to play at an ACC level for a full season. Matt Jones, who has missed on last-second, potential game-tying 3s in the past two games, played all 40 minutes against the Irish. Marshall Plumlee, who looked a step slow all day Saturday, played 39 minutes. Allen played 39 minutes. Luke Kennard played 37.

There are approximately 51 hours between the end of the Notre Dame game and the beginning of the Syracuse game. And the Blue Devils have to not only be ready but also be better than they were Saturday.

“For us that’s more of a challenge than for some other teams because our youth and our available number of players,” Krzyzewski said. “But, again, no excuses. We’ve got to be ready.”

The Blue Devils met Sunday for a practice that was light on contact – no use beating each other up in between games – and had one day to learn and perfect the game plan for the Orange. Duke can score against anyone, so the concern isn’t so much Syracuse’s 2-3 zone. It’s finding a way to stop Syracuse.

“We can score the ball. We know that,” Allen said. “We can’t worry about that going into games. We’ve got to get stops.”

Defensive effort is the first thing to go as fatigue increases. And that leads the Blue Devils back to their original issue: getting sharper while avoiding fatigue and playing just six players.

Like Krzyzewski said, nothing about this scenario is going to be easy.

This story was originally published January 17, 2016 at 3:51 PM with the headline "Small mistakes difference between winning, losing for Duke."