Sunday at Cameron Indoor Stadium was a night to remember for a lot of people.
If you’re Jon Scheyer, you just smacked a Power 4 team by 56, unloaded your bench and rested your starters. If you’re Bobby Hurley, you just got smacked by 56 in the building where your retired jersey hangs. If you’re the Duke Children’s Hospital, you’ll be receiving a healthy sum of donations to fund vital work that, as Caleb Foster said on the jumbotron at halftime, “you never hope you need, but are glad you have.”
The slew of newly minted Blue Devils had a night to remember, too. Khaman Maluach got his first start, Sion James and Darren Harris put together impressive bench cameos, Kon Knueppel slapped 19 points and four made threes on an Arizona State perimeter defense hapless to stop him.
Perhaps underreported in an analysis of memorable days is the gritty effort Tyrese Proctor and Foster, starting together for the first time this preseason, put in to make Sunday such a rousing Blue Devil win in more ways than one. They weren’t as flashy as Maluach or Knueppel were, but for a duo that may start every game this season, their mature performance — especially on defense — was everything Scheyer could have asked for.
It’s also exactly what he and Duke need to see more of moving forward. As Scheyer said postgame, the Blue Devils have long built their success on elite defense. And in Proctor and Foster, two team leaders and program veterans, he has two of the game’s best.
“We just preach defense first, and we're going to be a good team if we guard one through five,” Proctor said postgame. “It also allows our offense to just flow and be able to push the ball faster and get easy buckets offensively.”
The most obvious example of the philosophy Proctor and Foster both noted happened early in the second frame. Proctor eyed down his man and lunged in with a well-timed steal, swatting the ball to the floor before diving on it, wrestling it from Sun Devil hands and hurling it upcourt for Flagg to slam through the iron. To call it a momentum swing would be disingenuous — Duke was up 26 at that point — but it made a good game situation even better.
A “trainwreck” like Sunday, as Hurley described it, doesn’t happen to a team by accident. Duke earned its victory by dumping triple digits in the scoring ledger, but that was only possible because of an elite defensive effort spearheaded by its veteran guards. After all, Arizona State, like every team, has to be stalled before it can be pushed back.
Even if the Blue Devils eventually blew the brakes off their solar counterparts, they didn’t open with a ruthless offense. They struggled to hit shots, especially from deep, and surrendered the ball five times in the first half. And yet they entered the locker room with a 16-point buffer, mostly because of a chain of exceptional defensive sequences.
Foster was responsible for two, stealing the ball twice in the first 3:03 of play. One led to a pair of successful free throws from Flagg, while the other prompted a fastbreak layup that kickstarted a 20-6 Blue Devil scoring run. The pair’s elite on-ball defense held the Sun Devil guard tandem of Alston Mason and BJ Freeman to more turnovers than points and a woeful 1-of-8 shooting mark in the first half, depriving the visitors of any spark.
That carried into the second period, where the Mason-Freeman duo linked for just 10 points, still shooting a combined 30% from the floor.
“They really played well together on both ends,” Hurley said. “Their communication, their switching, their challenge of shots. They're pressuring us on defense. So things didn’t come easy to us in any way.”
That’s what elite defense can do. It keeps teams ahead when their offense isn’t playing lights out and lets them slam the door shut when their offense picks it up. Even in the period where Duke’s offensive fluidity waned midway through the first half, Proctor and Foster quietly contributed 16 points to Duke’s 37 at halftime and a further 11 by full time, setting up six additional buckets on the way.
“Everybody can do a lot of things, so just playing fast and just competing on defense is the main thing for us,” Foster said. “And offense, we just find each other and play together.”
Both Proctor and Foster said one of the most improved aspects of their game since last season is their defense, and the way they silenced any whispers of an efficient Sun Devil guard room — or offense at all, really — makes it hard to disagree.
“Ask me after we’ve played some games and put it together,” Scheyer said. “But I think the intent is there. The ability is there.”
Defensive excellence is infectious. Not every game will be as lopsided as Sunday’s was, but the blueprint Proctor and Foster put forward in how to defend and what it can do is one we should expect the Blue Devils to follow far into the season. If they do, Duke has a clear path to win or at least stay competitive in every game on its schedule.
“Even when you're maybe missing a coverage or the technique isn't perfect,” Scheyer said, “you can make up for some things if you're just giving it everything you have. Which I thought we did tonight.”
Proctor and Foster certainly did. And as Sunday night showed, as they go, Duke goes.
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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.