Duke’s compete level lacked against rival UNC, and Jon Scheyer has a problem with that
Duke’s Saturday night performance might have been good enough to beat some ACC teams.
That wasn’t the assignment, though.
The ACC’s best team, No. 3 North Carolina, faced little game pressure while dismissing the No. 7 Blue Devils, 93-84, in the first of the rivals’ two regular-season games.
“I just wasn’t happy with the way we competed,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “And that’s disappointing for me. You know, look, you can play really well and compete your butt off and still lose to them, because they’re a really good team. But we didn’t compete to the level that you need to, to have a chance to beat this team tonight. And that’s what I’m disappointed about.”
After his team led for just 16 seconds, the rare Duke-UNC matchup that failed to deliver a memorable game, Scheyer offered that same blunt assessment to his players.
“We just got out-competed, out-toughed,” Duke senior guard Jeremy Roach said in relaying the theme of Scheyer’s comments in the postgame locker room.
The Blue Devils (16-5, 7-3 ACC) had three players score 20 points or more, with freshman guard Jared McCain tallying 23 points and grabbing 11 rebounds.
But those numbers wallpapered over the holes in Duke’s overall game.
No team has scored more points against Duke than UNC (18-4, 10-1 ACC) did Saturday night. The game’s analytics show the Tar Heels produced 1.22 points per possession. This against a Duke team that’s allowed 0.981 points per possession this season, according to KenPom.com.
Duke scored enough to win, despite having only eight assists in the game. That led Roach to call the team’s offense “selfish.”
But what really got under Scheyer’s skin was all the loose balls that wound up in UNC control, be it on deflections or rebounds.
“The main story for me was the loose balls,” Scheyer said. “As you looked throughout the game, they were hungrier to get them and it turned into, you know, I’ll go back and watch the film and see, but I bet close to 15, maybe even 20 points. You have to give them credit for that.”
Scheyer’s only problem with giving credit where credit is due is that his team didn’t do nearly enough to earn any such credit. In an intense rivalry game, on the road, with Duke needing a win to edge closer to first place in the ACC standings, the Blue Devils lacked an edge.
“They out-competed us for sure,” McCain said. “They got those 50-50 balls and they translated. It felt like they hit a 3 every time we didn’t get to a loose ball. We didn’t compete.”
To steal a line from retired coach Mike Krzyzewski’s vernacular, the only verve the Blue Devils showed was in the first half when, after falling behind 10-4, they fought back to tie the game at 21. But, trailing just 31-28, the Blue Devils saw UNC rattle off seven unanswered points in a mere 49 seconds.
The Tar Heels led by 10 points at halftime and Duke never drew closer than eight points until the final minute when the Blue Devils managed to trim the deficit to seven.
Simply put, Duke never made UNC sweat, never made the Tar Heels feel like they weren’t in control after halftime.
It’s not how McCain wanted to feel after his first Duke-UNC experience as a player.
“It hurts, man, it hurts,” McCain said, “because this is the game. When you commit to Duke, it’s like the big game you look forward to. So it’s crazy to think that you don’t come out with just, you know, the energy and just go and play as hard as you can. So it sucks. It’s definitely gut-wrenching.”
So Duke is at the halfway point of its 20-game ACC schedule in third place, trailing UNC and now hard-charging Virginia (17-5, 8-3 ACC) in the league standings. The Blue Devils have home games with both before everyone gathers in Washington, D.C., for the ACC tournament in March.
But, long before those battles, Duke needs to play well against Notre Dame on Wednesday and Boston College on Saturday at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The Blue Devils need to hone their game, develop their internal fortitude, to compete against teams like UNC that are worthy of Final Four expectations.
It’s not too late to make it happen, but it needs to happen sooner rather than later.
“The thing I’ve said throughout this year,” Scheyer said. “This group hasn’t gotten it perfect all the time. The core group is back from last year. They always respond. They always respond. And so for me, I’m looking forward to seeing how we respond on Monday, in practice on Tuesday and then getting ready for our game on Wednesday. That’s what this is about for me.”
This story was originally published February 4, 2024 at 6:15 AM.