On Jan. 9, after a stunning 71-67 loss to Georgia Tech, the Blue Devils talked after the game about an uncharacteristic off-night on the offensive side of the ball for its top three scorers. Duke talked about the same thing, this time applying to the whole team, after an upset at N.C. State, and then again after last Saturday’s drubbing at Georgetown.
In Duke’s past three losses, the statistics do not lie—when the Blue Devils struggle to score from 3-point range (6-of-28 for 21.4 percent against the Yellow Jackets) or just in general (38.6 percent and 37.1 percent against N.C. State and Georgetown, respectively), the odds are stacked against them. Combine that with defensive struggles that lead to astronomical shooting percentages for its opponents, and Duke does not win ball games.
And in the ACC, a league with more parity than originally expected, another subpar performance could doom the No. 10 Blue Devils (17-4, 5-2 in the ACC), who are looking to stay on top of the conference with a victory against No. 21 Georgia Tech (16-5, 4-3) today at 7 p.m. in Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Last time out against Georgia Tech, Duke’s three stars—Kyle Singler, Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith—all struggled to make shots. Scheyer had the highest point total, 25, at the end of the game, but that number came off of 19 attempts from the floor, including a 3-for-13 day from behind the arc. Smith and Singler both only managed nine points, with Singler struggling through a 2-for-13 shooting effort.
But Georgia Tech is not expecting a repeat performance.
“He’s too good a player to have a bad shooting day again,” Yellow Jacket head coach Paul Hewitt said of Singler. “At home, all three of their perimeter guys have been lights-out. They are a different team at home.”
The Blue Devils, though, will need more than just energy from the Cameron Crazies if they are going to reverse the outcome of this contest. Georgia Tech’s frontcourt players were critical last time and dominated the boards in the pivotal second half. After getting out-rebounded 20-12 in the opening period, the Yellow Jackets worked for a 26-12 rebounding advantage in the closing half.
“You have got to play a 40-minute game against Georgia Tech,” Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “They are very athletic and they play hard, that is the first thing. And they are deep. Their three-man rotation with the bigs— [Gani] Lawal, [Derrick]Favors and [Zachery] Peacock—that is as good a three-man rotation for those two spots as there is in the country.”
Lawal was especially potent last time against the Blue Devils. He was the Yellow Jackets’ leading scorer with 21 points, 14 of those in the second half, off of an 8-for-9 performance from the field. He also tacked on nine rebounds, with four coming at the offensive end. Lawal is third in the conference in rebounding with an average of nine per game, and he is four shy of 600 for his career.
Duke and Georgia Tech are the only two ACC teams ranked in the national polls this week. A win for Duke would keep it ahead of Maryland and Virginia, the other two-loss teams in the conference, at the top of the ACC. A loss would drop them into the thick of the pack—going into tonight’s game, six conference teams have three losses or less.
According to Hewitt, this is not a signal of weakness from the perennial powerhouse conference. Instead, it is a reflection of a larger trend across college basketball.
“The league has always been one in which everyone beats each other up,” Hewitt said. “There’s still a lot of basketball left to be played. The league is not down; I think it’s balanced. I think if you look around the country you see teams beating each other up. I think people have to start coming to grips that there’s a lot of parity in college basketball.”
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