Duke men’s basketball may be ACC’s hottest team, with March tournaments drawing near
Duke always has basketball talent, thanks to top-ranked recruiting classes that arrive on campus year after year.
It often takes time, as it did this season, for the Blue Devils to develop toughness and togetherness. That’s the other side of the coin when you rely so much on roster overhauls year after year.
With March beckoning, head coach Jon Scheyer’s first Duke team is showing the fruits of a season full of development.
Saturday night Duke walloped Virginia Tech, 81-65, in a game that wasn’t as close as the score indicates. The Blue Devils jumped out to a 19-5 lead and extended their advantage to as large as 24 points when they scored 16 consecutive points early in the second half before putting the win on ice.
It gave the Blue Devils (21-8, 12-6 ACC) four consecutive wins and seven wins over their past nine games.
On a day when two of the ACC’s top three teams — Virginia and Miami — suffered losses, Duke cemented the fact that it’s found its stride.
“It’s February,” Duke freshman forward Mark Mitchell said. “It’s almost March. I don’t think we can keep saying we’re young. I think some of the games that we lost were really just because we were inexperienced but I think now there’s no excuses for saying we’re young or this or that.”
There’s no need to say it because the Blue Devils aren’t playing like a young team anymore and the win over Virginia Tech was the latest example.
For the second consecutive game, all five of Duke’s starters scored in double figures. For the second consecutive game, Duke committed fewer than 10 turnovers.
That was part of a brilliant night of offense during which the Blue Devils hit a season-best 56.6% of their shots.
A Duke team that relied on defense and rebounding, its two strongest areas, earlier in the season is showing it now plays half-court offense well enough to run away from teams.
A week earlier, at Syracuse, the Blue Devils unleashed a 21-2 run in what became a 77-55 win over the Orange.
Last Monday night, Duke scored 13 consecutive points during the first half of a 79-62 win over Louisville.
Against Virginia Tech, Duke scored eight consecutive points, followed closely by a 9-0 run during the first half. A 16-0 run in the second half was the knockout punch.
“I think we’re growing up right and right in front of your eyes,” Mitchell said. “So I think we’re just gonna keep building and keep showing we are simply playing at a high level.”
Scheyer used the same starting lineup for the ninth consecutive game Saturday night, which included Mitchell and three other freshmen — Tyrese Proctor, Kyle Filipowski and Dereck Lively.
That group, with junior guard Jeremy Roach rounding out the starting five, is proving it’s ready heading into March.
“Throughout the year,” Scheyer said, “whether it was injury, whether it was adversity with a loss or a setback, we just kept saying, ‘Stick together, stick together. Let’s be at our best when it really matters.’ And I give these guys a lot of credit because they haven’t pointed the finger. They’ve continued to work. Each of them has gotten better.”
Roach led Duke in scoring for the third game in a row, tallying 19 points with 11 assists against the Hokies. Mitchell’s 17 points and Lively’s 13 were both above their season averages.
On defense, where Duke has been solid all season, the main task against the Hokies was slowing down Hunter Cattoor. The 6-3 senior guard hit five 3-pointers when Virginia Tech beat Duke, 78-75, in Blacksburg, Virginia, last month.
Last March, he made seven 3-pointers while scoring 31 points when the Hokies beat Duke 82-67 in the ACC tournament championship game. But how Duke handled him Saturday night was another sign of growth and development. Scheyer didn’t even have to bring up how important it was for his team to slow down Cattoor.
“They said it without even me having to make a huge thing about it,” Scheyer said.
Proctor wanted to guard Cattoor in the half-court, man-to-man sets. Cattoor finished with a mere four shot attempts while scoring six points with three turnovers.
“Give Tyrese a lot of credit,” Scheyer said. “You have to be incredibly disciplined chasing him all over the court.”
Proctor did that while also scoring 10 points with five assists.
Duke’s talent is rounding together nicely after some rough patches in late December and the first three weeks of January.
Scheyer found a comfortable starting five while graduate student center Ryan Young, freshman Dariq Whitehead and graduate student forward Jacob Grandison provide solid depth off the bench.
The Blue Devils have two regular-season games to play — Tuesday at home with N.C. State and at North Carolina on Saturday night. Should they win both and carry a six-game winning streak to Greensboro for the ACC tournament, well, look out.
Scheyer skippered this group through some tumultuous patches and now has his team playing as well as it has all season.