Duke Blue Devils

It’s the biggest regular season game of the year for Virginia as the Hoos travel down 29 and 501 to Durham to take on the #4 Blue Devils. Cameron is the only place Tony hasn’t won, and Duke the only ACC team he hasn’t generally owned over the last five years. Is this the year we break out of our Duke funk?

Game Details:

Date/Time: Saturday, Jan 27th, 2:00 PM Eastern
Location: Cameron Indoor Stadium, Durham, NC
TV: CBS

What ‘They’ Say

Depth Chart:

Starters

Key Reserves

The ABC’s of Duke:

A) K bitches and moans that Duke is young and thin because they are. Granted, this is totally by his own making, as he spent the last few years failing to develop veteran role players to pair with his star freshmen, the likes of Quinn Cook, Amile Jefferson, Marshall Plumlee, or Matt Jones that have provided a steadying influence and ample depth. This year they’ve technically got 9 guys they’ll give minutes to, but only one of those is an upperclassman (Allen), two are battling injuries (DeLaurier who should play against us, Bolden who may not after missing the last 6 games), and another who’s not actually allowed to shoot (Justin Robinson). That means the bulk of the production falls to a lineup of true freshman. They’ve been feasting so far on the bottom half of the conference (BC, NC State, Pitt x2, Wake x2, FSU, none of whom have a winning ACC record); we’ll see how well they continue to fare against 9 Top 50 teams in their next 11 games.

B) Wendell Carter has exploded to make their front court the nation’s best on offense. Marvin Bagley was the big name coming into the year as Duke’s best true big man since Jahlil Okafor. And to be sure Bagley’s been superb, ranking 3rd in KenPom’s National Player of the Year race, and a projected Top 3 pick in this summer’s NBA draft. But Carter (who, to be fair, was also a 5-star recruit) has really started to come on in recent weeks, dropping 21 and 23 points in his last two games, including showcasing an effective 3 point stroke making him a rare powerful stretch 5. What is really making these two stand out, however, is their offensive rebounding, which are 14% and 13% respectively, and contributing to a team rate of 40.8% (meaning they grab 2 out of every 5 of their misses), best in the country. Carter and Bagley are both on KenPom’s current all-ACC 1st team (along with both Devon and Kyle). Our front court has had success stopping individual star post players this year, but dealing with two at the same time will be a truly unique challenge.

C) The offense gets the love, but the defense is improving. Yes, their offense is elite. At an offensive efficiency of 118.1 in ACC play, it’s the best of any team the last four seasons, since their 2014 iteration (Jabari and Rodney Hood) scored a 119. But there was legitimate concern about their defense, especially after their first 3 ACC games. BC scored 89 on only 74 possessions. FSU, in a loss, dropped 93. Duke gave up 96 points (on only 75 possessions) to NC State. Since then, they’ve been getting their act together, holding opponents under 1.00 points per possession. Now, it’s worth couching that statistic in the fact that those 5 games have been against 3 of the ACC’s four worst offenses: Miami (ACC ORtg 100.7), Wake twice (94.6), and Pitt twice (84.9), but you have to start somewhere. They’ve used a lot of zone as an alternative to their traditional man defense, but are prepared to throw out either depending on the matchup (more on that below). Duke’s got the size and athleticism to play some effective defense even against good offenses, so we’ll see if they’re ready to take that next step against Virginia 113.6 adjusted offensive efficiency.

Their season to date:

Duke is 18-2 on the season, 6-2 in ACC play. They’ve scored impressive neutral site wins over Michigan State and Florida, and good ACC wins over FSU (home) and Miami (road). Their losses are at BC in December and at NC State the first week of January. Most recently they won 84-70 at Wake Forest on Tuesday. 

Keys to getting the win:

1) For the love of god, control the defensive glass. I mentioned above that Duke is best in the country at hitting the offensive glass, grabbing essentially 2 out of every 5 missed shots. We’ve survived some bad nights on our defensive glass this season, giving up 19 offensive rebounds to UNC (game OR% of 49%) and Syracuse (game OR% of 51%) and 14 to NC State (Game OR% 40%). This is singularly the one statistic that frightens the crap out of me against Duke. We’ve tightened things up in recent games holding GT to 7, Wake to 6, and Clemson to 6, but none of those teams are in Duke’s league. Our big men (Salt, Wilkins, Mamadi, and Hunter) are going to have to play the rebounding game of their lives, which tactically speaking, may mean being more selective in employing post-doubles or chasing blocks. In the instances we do send a big man to help defend, the defensive rotations have to be almost anticipatory to cover down on the rebounding assignments. The more second chance looks we give Duke, the more it plays into their games where the defensive system breaks down and Duke can use its superior athleticism and raw scoring talent to get back to the bucket.

2) Mix up defensive looks. This is within the framework of the base Packline of course. When facing five freshmen, confusion is the name of the game. Never, ever let them get comfortable or stay in a rhythm. Never let them get a feel for what’s coming next. You want to make them think, to pause, because that’s when mistakes happen. That means varying up how we defend them. Sometimes we post trap, other times we merely hint that it’s coming then retreat. Sometimes we come over on help, sometimes we just show help but stay in the passing lanes or in the grill of the shooter waiting on the kick-out. This is especially important as it factors into staying home on your rebounding assignment, as discussed in the previous point, but at the same time we still have to actually come at them on the help, the shot block attempt, or the steal attempt to force them to honor that possibility. Hell, even forcing Duke to slow things up is going to disrupt their rhythm and make them play halfcourt sets far more than they’re used to: at an average offensive possession length of 14.9 seconds, they’re the ACC’s fastest and 13th nationally. The more we can make them uncomfortable, the better.

3) Ball screens and back cuts. I know they’ve been playing a lot of zone lately, but I doubt we see it much this weekend – only as a change of pace – but their man defense is too well suited to counter our offense for Duke to abandon it. Duke’s traditional defense, one that’s caused us fits over the years, is predicated on intense man defense, both on ball and off, with an emphasis on denial of passing lanes. They overplay our sides screens at the same time they’re in the grill of our point guard making those rhythm and timing passes to a curling wing very difficult. It also is better suited to defending the 3-point line than a zone is, and against our league-leading 3-point percentage (39.4% in ACC play), letting us bomb away uncontested would be suicide. This means that we absolutely must look for different kinds of actions out of our offense. Duke’s man this year just begs to be ball screened to death. Force them to hedge, or to switch, and the freshmen defenders are getting split either with the dribble or the pass to the roller. If we do run a sides action, reverse it hard and look for back cuts off the dribble drive, exploiting baseline actions, forcing their big men to react. Duke’s help defenders are terrified to foul, so we shouldn’t be overly hesitant to go hard to the rim, or to get too cutesy trying to avoid contact. Turn the corner and see the rim? Go and go hard. We need to do this enough to get them to abandon their extended man defense, and either sag to help or switch to a zone, which will then free up our jump shooters against their 37.6% 3P% allowed, second-to-last in the ACC. We need to be prepared to run crisp downhill motions against that man defense for as many minutes as K has his team playing it.

Bonus) Play with the aggression of an underdog. As of my drafting of this preview, I haven’t seen a Vegas line released. But I’m going to be surprised if Duke isn’t the favorite here. They’ve got the big names, they’ve got the home court advantage, and they’ve beaten us 3 straight, to say nothing of our haplessness in Durham since the 1995 classic. Plus Zay and Devon are the only two players on our roster who’ve played in Cameron (Salt was a DNP as a freshman). So it’s understandable to approach this game with low hopes. Perfect. Feed off this. Be the hunter, freed of expectations. Play with 40 minutes of hungry energy, always moving and never letting Duke rest on either end of the floor (especially if they’re in a man defense… make them chase us all over the floor), not letting whistles change how you play, treating every play like you’re down just one bucket, no matter how much we lead or trail at any given moment. This is the kind of game every basketball player should dream of playing in, so relish the precious opportunity to go into a hostile Cameron and dethrone the anointed ones.

Predictions:

So I’m going to come right out and say that I’m mildly skeptical we get a fair shake from the refs in this one. Given the way ACC refs have been swallowing their whistles as Guy and Hunter get hacked to death, then turning around and calling us for ticky tack screen fouls, at least while the game is still in its early flow, I’m not anticipating even neutral officiating in Cameron. This may be about bias, it may be about “game management,” effectively trying to keep games competitive and interesting to a TV audience (this is a product, after all, and ratings matter). Couple that with a conspiracy theory mentality that the ACC is not going to want to see us take such a commanding lead of the ACC standings before the Super Bowl is even played (if we go 2-0 this week, we’ll have a 3-game lead with only 8 to play, including tie-breakers, effectively wrapping up the regular season drama).

This means to get the win, we’re going to have to play an elite game. At the very least, keep it close through the first 30 minutes, stay within single digits, and then get hot as hell down the stretch so that even officiating discrepancies can’t be decisive.

But I’m just not sure I see it. It’s been a long time since we’ve been beaten by great post play. But then again I can’t remember the last starting front court we’ve faced as good as Bagley and Carter. I think the attention they command from our defense, especially drawing help defenders from both the post and perimeter, does just enough to free up their guards to score enough in the second half to pull out a narrow win, especialy given how disruptive their defense has been for our base offense.

Duke Wins – 70-64.