Why Duke basketball’s Jon Scheyer is happy he challenged young team, despite late losses
Another battle against a fellow ranked team left Duke in position to once again figure out what went wrong in the final, crucial minutes.
The No. 11 Blue Devils (4-2) left Las Vegas to arrive back in the Triangle early Wednesday morning after suffering a 75-72 loss to No. 1 Kansas that saw its fabulous freshmen misfire in big moments.
It’s not a cause for serious alarm bells, given that it’s still November and the season’s most important games are a few months away in March and April. Duke coach Jon Scheyer set the schedule up to challenge his young stars early.
But the tough lessons are still that — tough — even after Duke survived the hot start that saw Kansas build a 16-3 lead.
“It would have been easy to fold in that kind of game,” Scheyer said. “And the way they came out, I thought they made some tough shots, to be honest with you. I thought we missed some open ones and we just just stuck with it. Just kept fighting. Kept fighting. We’re asking a lot of our 17, 18, 19 year olds. We are and that’s what they want.”
Still, it’s maddeningly similar to two weeks earlier in Atlanta when four late turnovers — three by Cooper Flagg and one from Kon Knueppel — doomed Duke to a 77-72 loss to Kentucky.
Last Friday night, when Duke won at No. 24 Arizona, those two came through to deliver an impressive 69-55 win. A pair of Knueppel 3-pointers, in particular, transformed a Duke’s six-point lead into a 12-point advantage around five minutes to go that dispatched the Wildcats.
Against Kansas, Flagg scored 13 points but was limited to just nine shots with four turnovers as KJ Adams, the Jayhawks’ 6-7 senior forward, guarded him well.
Knueppel led Duke in assists with eight, but hit just 4 of 14 shots, missing all eight of his 3-pointers. That included a 3-point attempt at the buzzer.
Earlier, with 1:38 to play and Kansas leading 73-71, Flagg missed the first of two free throws before sinking the second to leave his team behind by a point. A Duke defensive stop gave the Blue Devils a chance to take the lead. But Flagg mishandled a pass in the lane with 48 seconds left, never fully controlling the ball and allowing the Kansas freshman Flory Bidunga to steal it.
With Duke still down 73-72 and 14.8 seconds left, Scheyer called timeout to set up the key possession. Knueppel wound up with the ball in the lane, where he was supposed to either get to the rim for a shot attempt or pass to an open teammate. Neither proved successful as the ball was knocked away and stolen by Kansas’ Rylan Griffen with three seconds left.
Scheyer said the Blue Devils wanted Knueppel and Flagg to have the chance to make the game-winning plays.
“I feel, as a coach, you want the ball in your best players’ hands,” Scheyer said. “And Kon and Cooper made so many plays throughout the whole second half. It didn’t go our way, necessarily. I have to look back on it to see how it unfolded. But I thought, the plays, I’m taking the ball in their hands any day of the week. We just have to execute better.”
Experience was a big part of this game against Kansas. Tyrese Proctor, Duke’s junior guard, scored 15 points while making 5 of his 7 3-point attempts.
Scheyer relied heavily on reserve forward Sion James, the 6-7 graduate transfer from Tulane. James scored 10 points while playing 20 minutes as sophomore guard Caleb Foster, despite starting, played just 15 minutes.
On the court in the game’s final minute when things didn’t go well for Flagg or Knueppel, James said the team falling short lands on everyone’s shoulders.
“The idea was to get the ball to Kon or Conner in the middle, in the paint,” James said. “Let them make a play. We trust those two with the game. And that’s really what it came down to.
When they hit the ball, we didn’t give him enough outlets when he was in the air, and we put him in a tough spot.”
Now Duke is back at Cameron Indoor Stadium for its next two games. First comes Seattle on Friday at 7 p.m., a relative breather in a challenging stretch. But that resumes on Wednesday when the Blue Devils play No. 4 Auburn.
That will close out a six-game stretch where Duke plays four ranked teams.
Scheyer admitted after the Kansas games he’s had thoughts wondering if he was “crazy” for plotting out such a tough schedule. But, despite the losses to Kentucky and Kansas, he feels the Blue Devils will be better off for the experience.
“I did it with this group because I thought they could take it,” Scheyer said. “I felt that they’re wired the right way. They have toughness about them and the growth that we’re going to have from this game, this whole trip. Playing at Arizona and then coming back and play Kansas on a neutral site. We’re going to grow so much.”