Passive and disconnected in loss at Miami, where does Duke basketball go from here?
Seeing his team pile up 21 turnovers, when trusted ball handlers simply failed to control dribbles and passes, was maddening enough for Duke head coach Jon Scheyer.
Seeing Miami gain a rebounding edge over his taller Blue Devils, though, didn’t sit well with the Blue Devils’ first-year coach.
“We’ve been a team that’s protected our paint,” Scheyer said in a moment of clarity following his team’s dumbfounding 81-59 loss to No. 19 Miami on Monday night. “We didn’t execute.”
With Duke starting 7-1 freshman Dereck Lively and 7-0 freshman Kyle Filipowski, along with 6-8 freshman Mark Mitchell, rebounding should rarely be an issue. Throw in that Miami’s starting center is 6-7 Norchad Omier and the fact that Miami won the rebounding battle 38-31 is more difficult to explain.
Or is it?
“This wasn’t as much about executing, to me,” Scheyer said. “It was about the focus, the fight, the energy to come out against a really good team.”
Duke lacked all three and it showed up in all aspects of this loss.
Now, the Hurricanes were favored to beat Duke, as they should have been. They are the team in the top 25. They were playing on their home court. They are the team ahead of Duke in the ACC standings.
But the way Miami (19-5, 10-4 ACC) took the Blue Devils apart raises questions Duke felt it had gone a long way toward answering of late.
This was the second time Duke has turned the ball over 21 times in a game. The other was Jan. 4 at PNC Arena when N.C. State hammered the Blue Devils, 84-60.
Duke averages 12.2 turnovers per game for the season. That’s not great (13th in ACC), but it’s a long way from 21.
That part of Monday night’s game, alone, would have doomed Duke (17-7, 8-5 ACC) to a defeat.
“It starts with the turnovers, right?” Scheyer said. “If you give any team, but a team as good as Miami, 21 turnovers and just layups and dunks and transition baskets, it’s gonna be a heck of a night for you.”
The Hurricanes scored 23 points off Duke’s turnovers, tallying 17 points on fast breaks alone. Miami finished with nine dunks and eight layups, a sign of how easily they got to the basket.
The Blue Devils pointed the fingers directly at themselves for allowing that to happen.
“I mean, granted they are a good team,” Filipowski said. “But they did nothing special to make us play how poorly we did. No, that was kind of just ourselves and our attitude and our mindset going into the game. We just didn’t really show any fight back.”
Filipowski led Duke with nine rebounds. Lively grabbed six, which is below his usual production. Mitchell had only three. Roach and fellow guard Tyrese Proctor both finished with zero.
The Hurricanes simply outhustled Duke.
“Rebounding is about going after the basketball, boxing out,” Miami coach Jim Larranaga said. “It’s about position and it’s about aggressiveness.”
On that front, the Blue Devils left their best game back in Durham.
That’s happened a lot this season. Duke is now 2-5 in ACC road games with a trip to Charlottesville to play No. 8 Virginia looming on Saturday.
Monday night’s blowout loss, combined with the forgettable trip to Raleigh last month, means Duke has suffered two losses by 20 points or more in ACC play for the first time in 40 years, since the 1982-83 season.
Weak ball handling and passive rebounding effort lead to those kinds of defeats.
Those are also signs of youth and inexperience. It appeared Duke had started to put those issues in the past by winning three consecutive games, including Saturday’s 63-57 win over North Carolina, prior to Monday night.
The Blue Devils took steps backward and now face another difficult game at Virginia (17-4, 9-3).
“Conference play is real, man,” Filipowski said. “Things can just flip the next day. Our next game is going to be a real character test because they are the best team in our conference right now and we are going on the road to them. We can’t repeat what we just did tonight. We got to get our stuff together and stay focused.”
Four of Duke’s seven remaining ACC games are at Cameron Indoor, where the Blue Devils are 12-0 this season. That is comforting as Duke seeks enough wins to shore up its postseason resume.
But once the postseason arrives, the games will be played away from Durham.
If Duke plays as passively and disconnected as it did at NC State and Miami, their tournament experiences will be short lived.
Scheyer, though, hopes for efforts like his team showed while winning 86-43 at Georgia Tech or even in the road losses, like the 72-64 setback at Clemson or the 78-75 loss at Virginia Tech.
“Even the games we’ve lost on the road, we’ve been right there,” Scheyer said. “I mean, playing at Clemson, at Virginia Tech. You win the last one at Georgia Tech.”
That effort and approach was glaringly absent at Miami.
“It wasn’t the same level of competing, the same look,” Scheyer said. “So that’s on me. That’s on our guys. That’s on our team. And it’s disappointing.”