How Duke basketball’s ugly loss at Miami earlier this month fueled a winning streak
For the second time in ACC play, Duke has strung together three consecutive wins.
The last time the Blue Devils attempted to win a fourth league game in a row they suffered an embarrassing 81-59 loss at Miami on Feb. 6.
What happened in the days following that loss has, for now at least, set Duke back on the right path, fueling the current three-game winning streak the Blue Devils will carry into Saturday night’s home game with Virginia Tech.
“Miami kicked our butt and we had to respond,” Duke graduate student guard Jacob Grandison said Thursday. “There’s no other choice.”
Duke lost at Virginia, 69-62 in overtime, in a game that featured a controversial ending. The ACC admitted its officials made an incorrect application of the rules that prevented Duke’s Kyle Filipowski from attempting two free throws with less than a second left in regulation with the score tied at 58.
By many measures, Duke played well enough to win on the Cavaliers’ home court. Over the next three games, the Blue Devils did win. They beat Notre Dame, 68-64, on Feb. 14 before pounding Syracuse, 77-55, on the road last Saturday before whipping Louisville, 79-62, at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Monday night.
Of course, beating three teams who all have losing ACC records isn’t going to vault the Blue Devils (20-8, 11-6 ACC) back into The Associated Press Top 25 rankings or put them in consideration for an NCAA tournament top-four regional seed.
It does show, however, the growth the Blue Devils have undergone since that dispirited performance in South Florida.
“Knowing how to play together,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said Thursday, “has been the biggest growth for us.”
Duke got there with words, followed by actions in practice. Before they practiced again after losing at Miami, the Blue Devils had a players-only meeting. The loss at Miami, coupled with an 84-60 loss at N.C. State on Jan. 4, gave Duke two ACC losses by more than 20 points in the same season for the first time since 1982-83.
Something wasn’t right. The Blue Devils needed to know, from each player, why they joined this team and what they wanted out of it.
“It was kind of like, ‘Say out loud why you are here,’ ” Grandison said. “Let everyone hear it so that we all are on the same page kind of thing.”
The Miami game marked just the third time any team had scored 80 points against a Duke team that’s otherwise been solid defensively this season. Duke shot 40.7% that game, making only 5 of 19 3-pointers while committing 21 turnovers.
It was a display of disconnected basketball that equally bothered coaches and players alike.
Immediately after the game, Filipowski said the Blue Devils’ character would be tested by how they responded.
“As a team,” Duke freshman Mark Mitchell said Thursday, “we just had to look ourselves in the mirror so we could do better with helping the team win.”
The next game, at Virginia, wasn’t perfect as the Blue Devils committed a season-worst 22 turnovers. Filipowski went scoreless before fouling out in overtime.
Despite all that, Duke shot better overall (44.9%) than its season average while making 9 of 23 3-pointers (39.1%). Unlike at Miami and N.C. State, Duke put itself in position, on the road, to beat a top-tier ACC team.
Against lesser foes over the next three games, Duke played even better. The Blue Devils committed only eight turnovers, while shooting 43.1%, to beat Notre Dame. They shot 54.5%, hitting 13 of 26 3-pointers (50%), to whip Syracuse.
On Monday night, Duke committed a season-low six turnovers while shooting 49.2% overall (including 9 of 22 3-pointers for 40.9%) while beating last-place Louisville.
Over the past four games, Duke has averaged 17 assists per game. They are playing together on offense and thus scoring more efficiently. Compare that to the nine assists Duke had in a 72-64 loss at Clemson on Jan. 14. Or the 10 Duke collected in its 24-point loss at N.C. State.
“Plays that you make in high school, where you drive the ball and defenses are going to collapse,” Scheyer said, “you have to make the right kick and make the right read. So I just think they experienced being in those spots. It really helped. And understanding the difference in winning and losing is when you turn the ball over. It’s a huge difference.”
The Blue Devils talked it out among themselves, learned how every player thought to form trust, then put those lessons into action in practice over the nearly three weeks since losing at Miami.
“We’ve been having good practices, more locked in,” Grandison said. “People are getting in work on their own. It’s many things. It’s a team sport. You could indicate and correlate it towards the meeting being a factor but, you know, it takes each person to kind of make a decision that we’re going to win and we’re going to play the right way.”
With three ACC games remaining, Duke has a chance to move up in the ACC standings to earn a top-four league tournament seed that would mean no games in Greensboro until the quarterfinals. With bracket projections listing Duke anywhere from a No. 7 seed to No. 10, the Blue Devils can also improve their NCAA tournament seed.
But the play they’ve shown over their past four games must continue without significant slippage.
That starts Saturday night against Virginia Tech (16-12, 6-11).
Scheyer has seen his team grow since the season began. The winning and losing forged habits along the way that are showing positive results. With March just a few days away, it’s just in time.
So perhaps that awful loss at Miami could help Duke after all.