Problematic rebounding, offensive flow among No. 2 Duke’s lessons from loss to Arizona
Jon Scheyer’s first Duke team used stingy defense and solid rebounding to form its foundation.
The second Blue Devils team under his watch found the rebounding portion of that duo a far tougher task to accomplish Friday night.
No. 12 Arizona outmuscled and outhustled Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium, posting a 78-73 basketball win that exposed some areas of concern for the No. 2 Blue Devils.
The Wildcats’ 45-33 rebounding edge, with 15 of those rebounds coming off their own missed shots, left Duke’s second-year head coach unhappy.
“Rebounding, if you’re smaller, bigger, whatever, it’s still about effort,” Scheyer said, “still about blocking out and pursuing the ball. And we’re gonna find a few times tonight where we stood and watched. It’s just a mindset.”
Last season, on the way to winning an ACC championship, Duke rebounded 35.9% of its own missed shots. That was the ninth-highest offensive rebounding percentage in the country, according to KenPom.com. Opposing teams only rebounded 26% of their missed shots against Duke.
On a per-game basis, Duke secured 7.9 more rebounds than its foes last season.
The first big test of this season left a far different result. Yes, last year’s Duke team had 7-1 center Dereck Lively, who is averaging 7.7 rebounds per game in the NBA this season with the Dallas Mavericks.
Duke’s post players this season include 7-foot sophomore Kyle Filipowski and 6-9 sophomore Mark Mitchell as starters with 6-10 Ryan Young, 7-1 Christian Reeves and 6-9 Sean Stewart coming off the bench.
Filipowski turned in a fantastic night with 25 points and a team-best eight rebounds. Only one of those rebounds came on the offensive end, though.
Mitchell, Young, Reeves and Stewart combined for 11 rebounds.
A freshman who played just three minutes, Stewart soared high to tip in Filipowski’s miss for a basket that gave Duke its first lead of the second half, 54-52, with 12:46 to play.
But that moment proved fleeting in the overall view of the game.
Scheyer didn’t place all the blame on his interior players, either. He’s starting a three-guard lineup around Mitchell and Filipowski, a shift from last season when Lively, Mitchell and Filipowski made Duke the nation’s tallest team.
“There’s a lot going on with me, Ryan, Mark, you know, the bigger guys being in down low and trying to rebound,” Filipowski said. “But, we’ve also got the emphasis on playing three guards at once. That’s how we’re gonna have to rebound together as a group.”
As he said earlier, Scheyer doesn’t care about big or small. It’s about the total group effort.
“Our guards tonight,” Scheyer said, “now, I need them to rebound more, no question. But, also, there wasn’t every play where five guys were blocking out.”
The rebounding was but one area of Duke’s player that left Scheyer sour. The Blue Devils’ flow on offense wasn’t up to the standards he expects, either.
Duke shot 43.1% overall, including hitting 8 of 23 3-pointers (34.8%). Better passing, Scheyer said, could have made a difference there.
“The difference when we made them work on defense and the shot quality that we got versus when we just came down right away and tried to make it happen.” Scheyer said.
One or two extra passes, the Blue Devils said, would have helped.
“I thought we handled that physicality pretty well,” Duke point guard Tyrese Proctor said. “I think we just didn’t move the ball. The ball was stuck on one side half the game. Coach emphasized that at halftime and that’s why we got our lead back. But then toward the end, it just started sticking again a little bit and I think we’ve got a lot to learn from it.”
That’s the good thing about this game. It’s a top matchup in the season’s second game. But Duke faces No. 4 Michigan State next, on Tuesday in Chicago. So the lessons need to come quickly or else the losses will be stacked one on top of another.