It's no secret that Duke is a young team this year. J.J. Redick, Shelden Williams, Sean Dockery and Lee Melchionni are gone, and there is not a single scholarship senior on the roster.
And like all inexperienced teams-even one with three freshmen McDonald's All-Americans-inconsistency is to be expected before the team learns to dominate.
The Blue Devils' performance Monday night in their win over Georgia Southern could very well prove to be a microcosm of the team's season.
Playing for the second straight night, Duke came out flat both offensively and defensively and found itself trailing an inferior Georgia Southern squad, 30-29, with just less than two minutes remaining in the first half. Then something clicked, and the Blue Devils went on a 9-2 tear to go into halftime with a six-point advantage.
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In the second half, the same Duke defensive unit that allowed the Eagles to hold the lead for the first 12 minutes of the first half limited Georgia Southern to just 16 points on 21.2 percent shooting to walk away with a convincing 24-point victory.
"Our offense was a little out of rhythm early, and that's the sort of thing you might see from a young team," junior captain DeMarcus Nelson said. "Defense is the easiest way to get into games offensively, and early on when our offense wasn't clicking like normal, our defense was keeping us in there. And especially in the second half, our defense really cranked it up."
On the offensive end of the court in the first half, the Blue Devils tallied only three assists as Nelson, Greg Paulus, Josh McRoberts and freshman Jon Scheyer shared ball-handling duties. All four struggled to get the offense flowing.
After halftime, Duke was much more efficient, racking up eight assists and shooting almost 20 percent better from the field.
"Greg was not comfortable out there tonight, so we didn't really have anybody kind of leading us offensively," head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "Historically, we do better-or we try to do better-in the second half as far as execution because we can call stuff [with the offense playing in front of Duke's bench]. When they're down at the other end you really have to rely on your leadership on the other half of the court to get some stuff done."
Key to the Blue Devils' resurgence after a sluggish start was the play of freshman Gerald Henderson. The wing scored six points in the final eight minutes of the half, including a crowd-pleasing, two-handed dunk to knot the score at 27.
And with Duke pulling away in the second half, the freshman scored five straight points for the Blue Devils and added an authoritative steal, slapping the ball from the hands of the Eagles' Antoine Johnson under the basket.
"Gerald was huge," Nelson said. "He showed a lot of guts and a lot of pride in the way he played tonight. He really came out and fought hard."
Duke took its lumps early Monday night, and, fortunately for the unseasoned Blue Devils, they had the talent to overcome a rough start and cruise to a victory. The rest of the season may be much of the same for Duke, with some thrilling upset wins over top-ranked teams.
At the same time, the inexperience could cost the young Blue Devils down the line against teams that are more talented than Georgia Southern. Duke is young, and inconsistency is to be expected.
"We're only going to learn from this," Paulus said. "It's the second game of the year, so we have a lot of time. It's a long season.
"Our good plays, our bad plays, we're going to watch the film and learn from them," he added.
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