How about that win Duke fans?
After that embarrassing performance this weekend in New York, this Duke team needed to show up at College Park with some heart. They needed to execute and they needed to prove that they learned something. Check, check and check.
There are a lot of things to talk about, but let’s switch it up in this post. Here’s the top 10 things I liked about this game.
#10 - I love the coaching decision to put Ty Thornton into the starting lineup. It’s not that Thornton is that great of a player, but for the coaching staff to throw this young freshman into the fire on the road, at Maryland, coming off a loss, really should tell us something. The reality is, this team needed a change.
Overall, Thornton was fine. He kept things slow, never rushing, never pushing. He’s a pass-first point guard and that’s what he did early. He struggled a bit with the full court trapped (he turned it over four times to three assists), but when Duke was in their half-court set, he was in control. When Maryland left him open, he wasn’t afraid to shoot (hitting his third career three).
I think most importantly having him in the starting lineup really helped other people do their thing. Let’s face it, this was Mason’s best offensive game in a very long time and both Andrew Dawkins and Seth Curry had their best road games in ACC play. You can be the judge on whether Thornton starting had anything to do with any of that.
Now will this continue? Probably for a while, but I’m not sure if it will last the whole season. It should be noted that at the end, when the game was on the line, Thornton was on the bench. The staff has faith in him, just not that much…yet.
#9 - Mason rediscovers his scoring touch. How important was that first series down the court? It was a set play, a simple play. Get the ball to Mason, let him take Williams one-on-one. If he misses that shot, you have to believe he doesn’t have the night he did.
He did make the shot though and Mason made six of his seven shots. Pretty impressive considering he did it against one of the conference’s best big men. Every Duke fan has been waiting for this kind of performance for a while now. He has all the skills in the world, he just needs the confidence to finish his shots.
I’ve talked about it all year, he’s struggled to make baskets because he’s always falling backwards instead of straight up or towards the basket when he’s shooting. Maybe it helped that Jordan Williams isn’t that great of a shot blocker, but it just goes to show, when he sets his feet, jumps straight up, the shot will go in more than it doesn’t. Now if only someone could teach him how to hit a free throw, we’d be even better.
#8 - Kyle Singler actually looked like a great player. During one stretch midway through the second half, the Terrapins got hot on the offensive end. They were suddenly hitting threes and dunking left and right. The crowd was desperate to get back into it. Someone outside was looking for a match to light the bonfire to celebrate a Maryland comeback, but there was one problem…they couldn’t stop Kyle Singler. The Duke senior scored five baskets in a row (11 straight points). He personally kept Duke’s lead safe.
That’s the kind of performance we thought we would be getting more frequently from Singler. That was the kind of stuff he was doing in last year’s NCAA Tournament. Of course the coaching staff deserves a lot of credit. They basically sat Kyle under the basket, giving him a double Plumlee screen. Singler simply picked his direction and rolled around for an easy mid-range jumper.
#7 - Duke discovers the long ball on the road. Yes, it has been a huge problem, but against Maryland, Duke hit their threes early, often and when they needed it the most. Overall, the Blue Devils hit 10-23 (if you go back to the final four threes taken against St. John’s, they’ve actually have hit 14 of their last 27 three-point attempts).
The experts will always say about this team, if Duke is not hitting their threes, they are beatable. That is a correct statement. However, if they are hitting them, they are nearly unbeatable.
#6 - Speaking of the long ball, Andre Dawkins and Seth Curry finally broke out of their road-shooting slump. Heading into this game, they were hitting just 18-percent from three in their last four road games. Tonight they were 5-9 from three. Dawkins’ back-to-back three-point shots at the seven-minute mark in the second half may not have been the official nail in the coffin, but it completely deflated a Maryland team desperate to rally at the end. Let’s hope this is a new trend.
#5 - Nolan Smith returned to his role as a combo guard. One of the big reasons to have Thornton at the point was to free up Nolan Smith. Oddly enough, I feel like it actually took Nolan a little while to adjust to playing shooting guard again. Sure he scored 21 tonight, but he needed 16 shots to do it.
However, what this did do was allow him to conserve some energy for late in the game. With about five left on the clock, Duke went into their classic stall offense. Nolan was back at point and he was basically unstoppable driving through the Maryland traffic. He scored eight points in the final five. He dished out another assist, grabbing one offensive board. That’s a productive five minutes folks.
#5 - Don’t be fooled by the shot charts. If someone didn’t watch this game, but went and checked out the shot chart, they’d see that Maryland missed a ton of shots at or near the basket. That person could simply conclude that the Terrapins couldn’t finish and that’s why they lost.
However, I’m going to give Duke some credit. Maryland did a lot of driving into the lane and Duke’s strategy was to crowd around that driver. What may look like easy misses on paper, were actually missed lay ups in heavy traffic. Part of the blame is the fact that Maryland is a terrible three-point shooting team. The Blue Devils dared them to launch it deep and Maryland missed a handful of wide-open threes.
#4 - Maryland never was able to take advantage of Duke’s foul trouble. With about 18 minutes to play in the second half, four Duke players had three fouls, including Singler and Smith. Inside Maryland has Jordan Williams, who is basically a foul magnet (He took 16 free throw attempts against Duke). Yet, Maryland did a piss-poor job working the ball down low. Think about it, for almost the entire game, when Williams got the ball down low, he either scored or was fouled, but he would go too-long of stretches without the ball.
#3 - Duke breezed through Maryland’s full court press. Except for a couple of mental mistakes by freshman Ty Thornton, Duke did a masterful job beating the Terrapins’ press. In fact, it was almost embarrassing easily. It helped to have Thornton in there. He’s not a great ball handler, but Maryland had to respect him. This allowed Nolan to roam around on an inbound pass and find open spots. Again, the coaching staff made a smart decision having Singler bringing the ball in and leaving a big man (usually Mason) in the middle. So often Duke simply threw the ball over the press and were in their half-court offense in 5-7 seconds. For the game, they turned it over only eight times.
#2 – Rebounding was key. Right now you could argue that Mason Plumlee is the best rebounder in the ACC. After struggling against St. John’s (only four boards), he grabbed 11 rebounds (one more than Williams). It was his sixth double figure rebounding game out of his last seven. As a team, Duke out-rebounded Maryland by five.
#1 – The most defining moment of the game had to be when Coach K sat both Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith with about six minutes to play in the first half (they both had two fouls). How would a lineup consisting of Thornton, Curry, Dawkins and two Plumlees produce points? How would they be able to defend?
Over the next four plus minutes, they would turn a eight-point lead into a 14-point lead (just 12 if you count Sean Mosley’s two free throws. Singler returned to the game during that time). Duke looked just fine. They passed the ball around, found the open man and four different players put the ball in the basket. Talk about confidence building.
