The Blue Devils jumped out to a substantial lead early in the first half of Wednesday evening’s exhibition against Fayetteville State, claiming a 50-22 lead at the break. With 20 minutes to play in Duke’s last on-court preview of the coming season, here are five of our observations.
Fresh lineup
With a starting five sans top freshmen Dereck Lively II and Dariq Whitehead (both out due to injury), the Blue Devils got to experiment a bit with their opening lineup. The first five on the court included Kyle Filipowski and Ryan Young in the frontcourt with Mark Mitchell, Tyrese Proctor and team captain Jeremy Roach rounding out the starters. Graduate transfer Jacob Grandison was the first player off the bench—which included special assistant to the head coach Mike Schrage in the place of associate head coach Chris Carrawell for the evening.
Back in Cameron
For Duke’s first game—albeit an exhibition—at Cameron Indoor Stadium since the Blue Devils’ March 5 loss to North Carolina, the Duke faithful could not have been more excited to get a chance to see the Blue Devils in action after October’s Countdown to Craziness event. Some students lined up early Wednesday morning to join the raucous Crazies in the student section. Regardless of how much the vibrating bleachers affect the visiting Broncos, the slightly thinned-out crowd was certainly not messing around.
Defense turns to offense
With the Blue Devils putting a focus on defense this season, in the words of Scheyer, Duke was able to out-rebound Fayetteville State and turn the boards into 16 fast-break points on the other end, none better than a Proctor outlet to Grandison to score two. Scheyer’s squad at times equipped a half-court press with Roach, Proctor and Jaylen Blakes each putting additional pressure on the Broncos’ backcourt. All half the Blue Devils were able to stay in front of their matchups, not letting through anything easy. The pressure and closed-off paint resulted in several shots with the shot clock running down and a sped-up pace as the Blue Devils came down the court.
Efficiency
The Blue Devils—with the help of several open shots and a plethora of shooting fouls—scored at a comfortable efficiency regardless of the opponent with their 1.67 points per possession. Duke started the night making its first 11 free throws to go along with a 55.6% clip from deep and 60.7% overall, keyed by the shooting strokes of Grandison and Filipowski—just the guys Scheyer had hoped could contribute with their 3-point shooting. The free-throw mark was elevated by the pristine showing from Mitchell (13 points), who found his way to the rim through traffic.
Player of the half: Jacob Grandison
Coming off the bench, the former Illinois wing looked confident from the jump by running the floor and spotting up for threes in the corner to blow Duke’s lead up to 28 by the horn. Each rebound lit the fuse under Grandison, who would bolt open to catch the pass from the rebounder before finishing. He went 4–for-5 from the field and 2-for-3 from deep to help with Duke's 21-2 run over an eight-minute stretch in the middle of the period.
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Micah Hurewitz is a Trinity senior and was previously a sports managing editor of The Chronicle's 118th volume.