When the Blue Devils are hot on the perimeter, there are few teams equipped to stop them.
But when Duke’s perimeter shots are not falling, and its big three of freshman Jayson Tatum, sophomore Luke Kennard and junior Grayson Allen is coming up cold, essentially the opposite is true.
Even though the Blue Devils played a sluggish game from the start of Saturday’s 64-62 win against Clemson at Cameron Indoor Stadium, long-range shooting kept them ahead for the entirety of the first half. Duke had earned a 29-18 halftime lead thanks to 21 points and 50.0 percent shooting from beyond the arc. But when the Blue Devils’ perimeter success fizzled out, the Tigers managed to pull themselves back into the game.
And what looked to be a blowout at the half became a nail-biter in the final minutes.
“We didn’t expect for them to roll over or for us to jump out on them,” graduate student Amile Jefferson said. “We knew it was going to be a dog fight, so we were poised.”
Although Duke pulled ahead early on, the Blue Devils scored only six points in the paint in the first 20 minutes of the game. Their three big men combined for just two points but accumulated five fouls in that same time span. They also allowed redshirt freshman Elijah Thomas to plant roots under the basket, where he tallied nine points and four rebounds in his 16 minutes on the floor.
Despite Jefferson playing at less than 100 percent, Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski has not placed much faith in rookies Harry Giles and Marques Bolden, and that trend continued again Saturday with neither player logging minutes after halftime. When things are going well, as they were in the first half, the Blue Devils can overcome that gaping hole in their recent success.
But if Tatum, Kennard and Allen can no longer provide the heroics on the perimeter, Duke flounders, and any team can take advantage.
“You know they’re desperate and if they win, they could get on a roll because they’re good and they have a lot of weapons,” Krzyzewski said. “I thought Thomas played really well for them today, and he hit his free throws. He gave them a really big boost.”
In the opening minutes of the second half, the Blue Devils went cold from beyond the arc. Duke missed on five of its first six 3-pointers—five of which came from Tatum, Kennard and Allen—before Kennard finally connected from deep with 9:50 remaining in the game. During that drought on the perimeter, the Tigers managed to reclaim the lead despite their 11-point halftime deficit.
“Some shots just aren’t going to fall, that’s just the nature of the beast,” Jefferson said. “What we have to do is continue to play defense. We can’t let our offense affect our defense.”
The Blue Devils’ second-half defense was lackluster, and the post players did little to stop the bleeding when Clemson junior Shelton Mitchell got hot and led the Tigers’ second-half charge. The Waxhaw, N.C., native sliced through the paint for easy looks at the basket to rack up 21 points on 8-of-11 shooting from the floor after halftime.
Clemson routed Duke down low, scoring 26 points to the Blue Devils’ 12 in the paint during the second half. The Tigers outrebounded Duke 38-34 and enjoyed 13 second-chance points. The Blue Devils had zero.
If Duke had a solid post presence—one that generated fewer fouls and more opportunities for points at the rim—Saturday’s down-to-the-wire dogfight with Clemson likely could have been a comfortable win.
“In that first eight minutes, I think they probably scored more points than they did in the whole first half,” Jefferson said. “We just always have to stay locked in.”
Despite their recent lack of production down low, the Blue Devils have won five straight contests. These issues have not been lethal enough to keep Duke from surging down the stretch of ACC play. However, in the Blue Devils’ past five contests, the three-headed perimeter monster of Tatum, Kennard and Allen has combined for an average 53.4 points per contest, and Duke has shot 43.3 percent from long distance in that span.
But in what was the Blue Devils’ worst loss of the season—a 84-82 home defeat to N.C. State–those same three sharpshooters combined for 49 points and Duke shot an abysmal 28.6 percent from deep.
The Blue Devils have shown they can compete with the nation’s best teams with a lethal perimeter attack. However, to match up with more teams in March and increase its odds of a deep postseason run, Duke will need more than that moving forward.
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