Upon further review, the disappointing part of Saturday’s loss at Clemson had much to do with how out of character it was for Duke’s men’s basketball team.
The Blue Devils simply weren’t good enough defensively.
“It was our habits. I didn’t think it was indicative of how we played defense this season,” coach Jon Scheyer said Monday morning on the ACC teleconference. “It’s really disappointing, you know, because we made a lot of winning plays, still, to put us in position of winning at the end of the game.”
Duke’s first loss since Nov. 26 came in spite of the Blue Devils taking a one-point three times in the final five minutes.
Clemson won Saturday night’s game 77-71 in large part because the Tigers scored on each of the ensuing possessions after Duke led. The Tigers scored on 11 of their last 13 possessions — the only two scoreless possessions saw a missed front end of a 1-and-1 at the free-throw line, and then two missed free throws.
The defensive numbers for the game paint a worse picture for Duke.
Clemson’s 2-point shooting was more than 20 percentage points better than Duke’s season average; the Tigers making 63.4% of their shots inside the arc, Duke entering with a 2-point defense of 41.7%.
“It’s hard to win the battle down low if you’re not rebounding, giving up a ton of second-chance opportunities,” freshman forward Cooper Flagg said on Saturday night.
Duke gave up a season-high 40 points in the paint and Clemson’s effective-field goal percentage (field goal percentage with added weight for made 3s) was 62.8%, a season-best for any Duke opponent.
“Our defense in every facet, I could go down the line,” Scheyer said of the issues, “our resistance on the ball, our talk on switches — when you give a team 40 points in the paint in addition to over 20 free throws, that’s a recipe to lose.”
And so it was, marking Duke’s first loss in ACC play. The Blue Devils remain in first place, with Clemson and Louisville both having two losses in league play. Duke has the tiebreaker over the Cardinals but obviously would lose a tiebreaker scenario with Clemson, given Saturday’s result and them not having a rematch on the schedule.
Now, Duke has to turn the page on what was probably its worst defensive performance of the season. The Blue Devils play host to the ACC’s west coast newcomers this week, with California coming to Durham on Wednesday night and Stanford in town on Saturday.
“It’s gotta be a lesson on the job we have to do to protect our paint and collectively guard the ball,” Scheyer said. “I think this team has been disruptive, reacting to the ball. This game … for whatever reason, and I’ve tried to analyze what I said to them, what we did before, we were very 1-on-1 oriented off the ball.”
One more piece to this: Scheyer added that Clemson won “almost every 50-50 ball.” He credited the Tigers for being “a tough, veteran team that values every possession, and they beat us to the ball.”
