RALEIGH—What do irritated older siblings, history’s greatest military minds and Duke men’s basketball have in common?
They all pick their battles.
A quick glance at the box score from the ninth-ranked Blue Devils’ final road match of the season at N.C. State Monday night immediately highlights an apparent weakness: Wolfpack big-man DJ Burns Jr., who concluded his evening with a cool 27 points, five rebounds and four assists. If one tossed away the stat sheet after looking at that — just as N.C. State head coach Kevin Keatts did when asked about Blue Devil forward Sean Stewart — they would probably guess that Duke had no reply, was out-worked, out-muscled and outscored.
Yet none of those things were true in the Blue Devils’ 79-64 thumping of the Wolfpack at PNC Arena. Burns was great, but intentionally so. Amidst many other battles it picked and won, that was the fight Duke was alright with conceding.
“You're not gonna take away everything,” head coach Jon Scheyer said postgame. “So for us it's battle and make them work, and take away the threes.”
Bingo.
One criticism of the Blue Devils this season despite their status as a potential ACC regular-season champion and NCAA tournament No. 2-seed has been their relative inability to lock down opposing bigs. There’s some truth in that, to be sure, but it’s perhaps more intentional than many will give Scheyer and his team credit for.
Burns had his way with sophomore center Kyle Filipowski in the first half Monday, as two quick fouls relegated him to the bench with a donut in every statistical category after just four minutes of play. But the same statistics that so favor Burns provide quite the indictment on his teammates, who shot the ball just nine times from downtown, converting on three of them, and turned it over to Duke 10 times. Reliable deep threat DJ Horne, the Wolfpack’s leading scorer who shoots nearly 43% on the season, was suffocated to just one missed attempt from three and eight points in his 35 minutes.
All the while, a rounded Blue Devil lineup began to find some separation. Tyrese Proctor carried the offensive burden in a leggy first half before fellow guards Jeremy Roach and Jared McCain caught fire in the second. Filipowski added an important, if not slightly underwhelming, nine points and two rebounds with extended minutes in the second frame.
But the real X-factor was Stewart, whose breakout 12 points, five rebounds and three blocks in a career-high 26 minutes in Raleigh solidified him as a dynamic and effective rotational piece for the potential month left in the season.
“Sean provides something that we don't have. He's our best athlete. His versatility on defense, his touch around the basket, he's a lob threat and his skill is gonna continue to get better and better,” Scheyer said. “We’re better when he's out there and he just did a terrific job.”
“He just gives us extra life,” Roach added. “It’s stuff you need for a championship team.”
Keatts’ assessment — the one where he sassily tossed the stat sheet in front of him — was more succinct.
“Well, s—t, he was good.”
Alongside his offensive strengths, Stewart played probably the best defense of any Blue Devil on Burns in the post. This was supported by Duke’s guard trio, which quickly gained separation with its pop-pop-pop passing around the perimeter for wide-open looks. For all of the ways Burns’ lineman-type build and close control of the basketball caused Duke problems, the Blue Devils plain and simply caused far more for the Wolfpack.
Duke also showed its composure, not allowing Burns to attract double-teams that left a man unmarked. They made the 6-foot-9 senior work for every catch and bucket, but didn’t sacrifice his close 2-pointers for kickout threes. All the while, that’s exactly what Duke did on the other end. Letting Burns work was a choice, not a folly.
“He can score, he can really score. Obviously he had 27 on us. He can really pass, though,” Scheyer said of Burns. “When he passes, half his assists are for threes. And the double scared us.”
This trend extends beyond Monday. Take Duke’s Jan. 27 win against Clemson. PJ Hall (a near shoo-in for the All-ACC First Team) and Ian Schieffelin bullied Filipowski in the post for 25 combined points and 21 rebounds. They would have had the last laugh when they forced Filipowski’s fifth foul with seven seconds left, sending Hall to the stripe for a pair of shots, if Proctor didn’t draw an infraction from Josh Beadle six seconds later that gave him the chance to ice the game instead.
Clemson’s bigs ran wild, its guards ran mild. All the while, Duke found a way to out-shoot the Tigers when it counted, leaning heavily on its elite backcourt to do so. Add a month and some change and substitute Clemson for N.C. State, and you get the idea.
“Flip’s a four,” Keatts said Monday. “They don't have a legitimate post guy other than Ryan Young. And so we knew that we could get an advantage on it. The disadvantage is, they were gonna put us in ball screens, so it's a chess match.”
Many similar big-man battles are close on the horizon as Duke stares down the barrel of the postseason — Hall, North Carolina’s Armando Bacot, Purdue’s Zach Edey, Kansas’ Hunter Dickinson and Arizona’s Oumar Ballo could all be on the schedule based on how these next few weeks shake out. Chances are, the Blue Devils won’t be able to shut these bigs down completely, even with Mark Mitchell’s defensive excellence and Stewart’s athleticism. After all, this group doesn't have the 7-foot-1 Dereck Lively II or 7-foot Mark Williams it did in the 2023 and 2022 postseasons, respectively.
But does that matter if the Blue Devils can out-shoot their opponents the way they did Monday? Does that matter if Duke’s elite backcourt trades threes for twos, is lethal in transition and plays impeccable on-ball defense that prevents foes from doing the same? Does that matter if Mitchell — who admittedly struggled against N.C. State — maintains his generally high-volume scoring and elite defense, or if Filipowski continues to produce in double-digits? Does that matter if Stewart further proves his worth as an elite athlete with improved spatial and tactical awareness and the ability to take over a game? All of this is perhaps too early to say, but also far too simple to write off.
After all, basketball is a game which requires teams to pick their battles. And Monday night, the Blue Devils might have just found their pincer.
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Andrew Long is a Trinity senior and recruitment/social chair of The Chronicle's 120th volume. He was previously sports editor for Volume 119.