My colleague Joe Drews made a bold move earlier this week by blaming Sunday's loss in Chestnut Hill on his ludicrous road record as a reporter. I, too, have felt the sting of superstition, owning a 1-5 record covering conference road games in my Chronicle career.
But it's time to sidestep superstition and call a spade a spade.
Duke is a bad road team. As in, three straight road losses bad. As in, 3-4 on the season bad.
The obvious statistical difference is the team's shooting: the Blue Devils shoot 46.6 percent at home, 39.9 on the road. It's even worse from beyond the arc: in Cameron, Duke shoots 35.4 percent from deep; not in Cameron, that number is 26.8.
That's one of the main reasons Duke lives by the three at home and dies by it on the road.
A few weeks ago, after the Blue Devils' loss to Wake Forest (man, remember when Duke was No. 1? Yea, me neither), David McClure said, "We didn't think we were the kind of team that needed to lose to learn a lesson."
Now, four L's in six games later, the Blue Devils need to be the kind of team that learns a lesson from a loss. (Sidenote: I was surprised to see that Mike Krzyzewski's record following a loss to North Carolina was just 21-12 entering Sunday's game. We often think of K as the kind of guy who avoids losing streaks, but that's not the best percentage, especially considering that when Duke loses the finale to UNC, it often played a low-seeded team in the first round of the ACC Tournament. I don't know what to do with this information.)
But the Blue Devils have shown a disconcerting inability to adapt—both within games and between them. After being shredded by Ty Lawson last Wednesday because of their aggressive switching defense on the perimeter, they did the same thing Sunday with similar results. After continuing to rely on the three when it wasn't falling in the losses to Wake, Clemson and UNC, Duke shot 16 of them. (Of course, arguably the worst shot taken by the Blue Devils was the long two Gerald Henderson settled for on the team's last meaningful possession.)
The 1-3-1 trap was a nice change of pace late in the second half, but it may have been too late. And if Duke is going to play it, Greg Paulus can't be looking to draw a charge under the basket when Reggie Jackson pulls up just inside the elbow for what turned out to be an uncontested game-winner.
The Blue Devils get their annual February self-esteem booster with a trip to St. John's Thursday, but after that it's Wake, at Maryland, at Virginia Tech, Florida State, and at UNC. That's two home tests and two road tests (sorry, Maryland). That's four chances to show that this Duke team can bounce back from the now-annual February swoon. Four chances to show that this Duke team can adapt. Four chances to show that this Duke team still has a capital-C Chance come March.
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