Fans and analysts threw around many theories as to why the men's basketball team, after starting the season 21-1, dropped back-to-back away ACC games: Duke lost its edge after being spoiled with win after win, the Blue Devils were fatigued, that it was just impossible to win every road game in this year's absurdly arduous ACC action, etc.
There were many other hypotheses, but the true reason Duke had a two-game losing streak was its dwindling defensive intensity. Before their games against N.C. State and Wake Forest, the Blue Devils were only allowing their opponents 72.4 points per game, while also grabbing 10.4 steals per contest. But with their spread offense and the fluid ball handling skills from players at every position, the Wolfpack outgunned Duke 78-74, and despite all of State's dribble-drives and cross-court passes, Chris Duhon and company nabbed only six steals. Wake Forest showed even more weaknesses in the Duke buttress by gunning for 90 points on only 14 turnovers.
"When [we] won all those games in a row--we won 18 in a row--the need to play hard defensively sometimes diminishes," Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "It's not like we don't care about playing defense. It just happens."
Against Maryland Sunday, the diminishing did not happen. The Blue Devils either stripped, picked off or outright took the ball from Maryland 12 times in the first half with players from all five positions deflecting balls in passing lanes and annoyingly poking the orange sphere from Terrapin drives on nearly every possession. In addition to the 15 turnovers this stifling defense created, Maryland shot only 32.3 percent in the first half, leading to a 45:28 Blue Devil-to-Terrapin scoring ratio 20 minutes into the contest.
While the Duke intensity was obvious from the game's opening-tip, at first it appeared the Blue Devils could not translate Krzyzewski's teachings on defense to the game. Sophomore guard John Gilchrist scored eight points in the game's first 4:30, and the Terrapins took an 11-9 lead with 15:26 remaining in the first half. Gilchrist's performance was eerily reminiscent of Wake Forest's Chris Paul's 23-point consummation in Duke's loss last Wednesday.
But at the 15:09 mark, Krzyzewski entered his own sophomore guard, Sean Dockery, the sultan of steal. The Chicago native ignited the Duke defensive firestorm, as he stole the ball four times in the opening half. Also matching up one-on-one with Gilchrist, Maryland's leading scorer only put six more points on the board for the remainder of the game.
"I think when he was scoring he was hitting tough shots," Dockery said about Gilchrist, Duhon's defensive matchup. "Chris was putting great pressure on him. That's just the way he is. [Gilchrist] was on fire and we just needed to put a different type of pressure on him." Krzyzewski felt Dockery's pressure was exactly the type needed for Gilchrist.
"I thought Dockery really turned the ball around for us," Krzyzewski said. "When we first started the ball game they were penetrating against us. When we inserted Sean and took Chris off the ball, Sean's defense on the ball and Chris off the ball got us back to a real high level. Then for the rest of the half, anybody who we put in stayed at that level."
The clearest example of how communicable Dockery's defensive disease was at the 13:29 mark came when Shelden Williams split the ball out of Maryland center Jamar Smith's hands. The 6-foot-9, 245-pound freight train proceeded to single-handedly push the ball up the court before softly laying in two points.
"We stressed a point today that we wanted to get out into the passing lanes," Williams said. "We kind of got away from that during the middle of the season, and we tried to get back where we were. We always try to play the passing lanes, and fortunately we got some good steals."
Duke's defense never let up in the second half, as the Terrapins trailed by at least 20 points for all but 1:27 of the game's last 20 minutes.
"They're really good," Maryland head coach Gary Williams said. "They get up on you [in the passing lanes] and we're not a great passing team. They make it tough. That hasn't bothered us in about five years, but that bothered us today."
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