The Blue Devils young team has a lot of noise to shut out in the hours leading up to their game on the road at Wake Forest. With every outlet writing the Blue Devils out for the NCAA tournament and their most highly rated recruit choosing to forgo the rest of the season and prepare for the NBA Draft the Blue Devils faced one of he the hottest shooting 3-point team in the ACC. The Blue Devils were coming in after beating NC State on the road by 16 and with winning streaks hard to come by this season Duke had their work cut out for them. The Blue Devils played to impress.
The Blue Devils played what could be their best offensive game of the season – not in terms of points but in terms of efficiency. The Blue Devils shot the ball at a 54% clip – 8% more than their average and they also shot the 3-ball at 44% which is nearly 10% above their average for the season. Most importantly for the Blue Devils is that they gave themselves more opportunities to score by not turning the ball over at their usual double-figure clip. Duke ended the night with only 6 turnovers which only cost them 2 points, while dishing 17 assists on the night.
Duke has always been a team priding itself on defense leading to offense and the Blue Devils had been a porous defense – especially on ball screen defense. Coach K alluded that this coaching staff added some wrinkles in how they defend those ball screens and it paid off for Duke. Duke defended the Demon Deacons as well as they have defended anyone all season long – holding wake to under 40% shooting and under 30% from beyond the arc. Duke defending better gave them a much larger margin for error but with Dukes ability to move the ball around effectively they didn’t much need that margin. A large part of Duke’s defense has been Mark Williams, his presence in the paint disrupting and blocking shots has been crucial for Duke’s improvement on defense. Williams being able to stay on the floor affords Matthew Hurt the ability to not have to guard big and keeps Duke’s primary offensive weapon out of foul trouble.
Duke got a huge effort from the aforementioned sophomore Matthew Hurt who scored 26 points in his last outing, following that up with 22 points against Wake Forest on 8-9 shooting. The Blue Devils also got double figure efforts in scoring from DJ Steward who added 16 points and 3 assists, 12 points from Joey Baker who went 4-7 from beyond the arc and 11 points form Wendell Moore. Freshmen Jaemyn Brakefield who saw his minutes increase added 7 points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists.
Stats of note for Duke:
24 points from Duke’s bench
34-26 advantage in paint points for Duke
37-28 edge in rebounding for Duke
6 turnovers for Duke
