Duke lost ugly at Virginia, but Coach K hopes the experience proves valuable
Before Saturday, and a defeat at Virginia that seemed to unfold in slow-motion both because of the game’s pace and an outcome that often seemed inevitable, Duke had failed to score more than 50 points just 10 times during coach Mike Krzyzewski’s head coaching tenure.
The most recent of those came in 2017, during a late-season defeat at Miami. Another came in 2009, during a 74-47 defeat at Clemson. Two others came in 1995 and 1996, and the majority of those low-scoring efforts came in the early 1980s, in Krzyzewski’s first seasons at Duke.
Now in his 40th as the Blue Devils’ head coach, he has rarely been left to describe offensive performances as deficient as the one his team provided on Saturday during its 52-50 defeat at Virginia.
Afterward, the Duke locker room was as quiet as a whisper. Players silently dressed and packed their things in front of their lockers. Several of them stared at the floor while they sat, their heads hanging. The scene produced a foreboding vibe, as if the worst part of the Blue Devils’ night might not have been the game but instead facing Krzyzewski afterward.
When Krzyzewski met with reporters not long after, though, he appeared jovial in comparison to the players he’d just left. Duke made 30.5 percent of its attempts from the field on Saturday, but Krzyzewski did not bemoan his team’s poor shooting. Nor did he criticize its inability to solve, or even challenge, the Cavaliers’ relentless pack line defense.
Instead, Krzyzewski adopted a fatherly tone. In defeat, he sounded more proud than deflated, or frustrated.
“Our guys played hard, man,” he said. “I’m proud of my guys. I’m disappointed we lost, and congratulations to (Virginia). I mean, I recognize good basketball and good, hard basketball … I’ve coached a lot of games.
“This was a really good basketball game.”
Hours after Duke’s defeat, the calendar turned to March. Entering college basketball’s most important month, then, the Blue Devils’ showing at Virginia provided some important lessons. For one, the Cavaliers, who are the reigning national champions, cannot be discounted after a regular season that has often been uneven and inconsistent.
Defensively, Virginia is still as much of a force as it usually is under coach Tony Bennett -- especially when Jay Huff, the 7-foot-1 junior forward, plays with the purpose he did on Saturday. Huff, a native of Durham, finished with 15 points -- six of them on dunks that energized the crowd at John Paul Jones Arena. Perhaps more important, he blocked 10 shots.
The other lesson came from the Blue Devils, whose performance, for the third time in their past four games, revealed their vulnerability. After recent defeats at N.C. State and Wake Forest, Krzyzewski admonished his team’s effort. There was no such criticism on Saturday, yet the defeat at Virginia exposed Duke’s youth, inexperience and, at times, its lack of toughness. Krzyzewski was left to hope that the loss might improve those kinds of intangibles.
“I do think that the experience of playing a game like this helps us,” he said. “(Virginia is) more experienced, they’re older and they’re bigger. And we had a -- we had a really good effort.”
Duke, which entered Saturday night ranked seventh nationally, is not a program that often touts moral victories. The dejection in the locker room suggested that the players, at least, didn’t take any solace from coming close, only to lose. Krzyzewski, though, spoke afterward as if he was attempting to will the defeat into imparting long-lasting, valuable lessons. He sounded forgiving.
In victory, Virginia, the reigning national champion, overcame a seven-point deficit early in the second half. When the pressure of the moment seemed to rise during the final 10 minutes, the Cavaliers rose with it. It was those moments, especially, when their experience shined. The youngest player in Virginia’s starting lineup was Kihei Clark, the sophomore point guard.
The oldest player in Duke’s starting lineup, meanwhile, was Tre Jones, the sophomore point guard. He started on Saturday alongside four freshmen. Krzyzewski hadn’t used four freshmen in his starting lineup since late November -- and the same Duke starting five that started on Saturday also started in its defeat against Stephen F. Austin on Nov. 26.
On Saturday, Krzyzewski said he used that starting five again in hopes of bolstering Duke’s shooting potential. It didn’t work as planned. The Blue Devils’ freshmen were playing in their 29th college game, but they’d never played against a team with the defensive acumen of Virginia. Among Duke’s starters, only Jones had ever faced Virginia, and that came last year.
“Last year they played that way,” said Jones, who led Duke, along with Vernon Carey, with 17 points. “And we just had freakish athletes that it was tough to play that way against, and we shot the ball extremely well last year versus the pack line defense. …
“That’s how their defense is, and if they want to force you into driving and kicking and shooting those threes, and we didn’t hit tonight.”
And yet Duke, which led for nearly half of the game, still had its chances -- two of them in the final seconds. The game ended when Jones’ desperation 30-foot runner bounced off of the back, right side of the rim, though for a moment the shot looked like it might fall. On Duke’s previous possession, Jones passed to Carey with less than 10 seconds remaining.
For a moment, Carey had been open in the lane near the basket. The pass arrived on time. Then, in an instant, the Cavaliers surrounded him. Carey attempted a layup, but Huff blocked the shot, secured it and then was fouled. The play was a microcosm of a game that belied Carey’s line in the box score. He finished with 17 points on 11 shots, despite having little room to operate.
“They’re always there,” Carey said, when asked to describe the most difficult part of Virginia’s defense. “Their backside (help) is always there. So it’s just difficult to finish around it.”
It is one thing to hear about Virginia’s defense, or to study it on film. It is another to face it, live, for the first time -- and for long stretches on Saturday it looked like the Blue Devils had not experienced anything like it. There was good reason for that, given that four of their five starters were seeing it for the first time.
For Wendell Moore, another Duke freshman, the most challenging part was the game’s pace.
“They don’t really offensive rebound a lot,” he said. “They kind of send all their guys back, so teams can’t get out in transition. … We kept trying to get out in transition, we got a couple of buckets. But they did a great job defensively.”
Between late November and the middle of February, Duke won 16 of its 18 games. In a college basketball season without much rhythm or consistency, and without any overwhelming favorites to win a national championship or even reach the Final Four, the Blue Devils at the time made a strong case to be considered one of the nation’s best teams.
Since then, though, they’ve suffered a blowout defeat at N.C. State, a double-overtime, double-digit loss at Wake Forest and, now, a humbling, inefficient loss at Virginia. Now all of a sudden it’s March, and Krzyzewsk said “we’re very much a developing team” -- even four months into the season. He hopes a defeat like the one Saturday can accelerate the development.
“We’ve won a lot of games,” he said. “Now we’ve lost three out of four. The world hasn’t come to an end or anything, but also -- how do you get your experience, except by being in these games?”
This story was originally published March 1, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
