Twenty-point games are becoming at common for Duke’s Jabari Parker as breathing is for the rest of us.
The Blue Devil’s freshman sensation scored 21 points and added 10 rebounds to help lead Duke past UNC-Asheville 91-55 in the opening round of the NIT Season Tip-Off. In four games this year Parker is averaging over 20 points, the only player Mike Krzyzewski has ever coached to accomplish such a feat.
Duke got 18 points from Rodney Hood and 10 apiece from Quinn Cook and Semi Ojeleye, who played his best game as a Blue Devil in extended minutes. Andre Dawkins also continued his recent resurgence scoring 13 points off the bench on 4 of 7 shooting including 3 of 6 from behind the arc.
The Blue Devils clearly were the superior team from the opening tip and in every aspect of the game though they were a bit sloppy in the first half committing 9 turnovers in the first half and gave up far too many rebounds. They cleaned things up a bit in the second half only turning the ball over 6 times and by games end they led the rebounding category 42 to 28.
It was clearly a workman like performance over all with all scholarship players getting into the game. Krzyzewski is clearly continuing to tweak with different lineup combinations in the early part of the season so don’t expect to see the best of Duke just yet.
The Blue Devils who dropped to No. 6 in the polls following last week’s loss to then No. 5 and current No. 2 Kansas, will advance to play the winner of ECU and Norfolk State Tuesday night at 8:30 in Durham.
If the Blue Devils win as expected they will advance to the tournament semi-finals where if the tournament seeding holds, they could face the number three seeded Alabama on November 27. Should Duke continue to win the tournament sets up a potential Duke-Arizona match up in the finals which would pit two Top 10 teams against each other and the second such match up for the Blue Devils this season.
