LOUISVILLE, Ky.— The Blue Devils have made comebacks before, but yesterday’s was almost biblical.
Down 30-16 points with 8:36 to go in the first half, Duke faced a ceaseless storm of Louisville success. A 14-point deficit looked as if it would only continue to grow — but then the Blue Devils turned it around to defeat the Cardinals 76-65.
“They’re like Noah’s Ark,” said Louisville head coach Pat Kelsey after the game. “They’ve got two of everything. They’re deep, they’re skilled, they’re physical, well-coached. You’ve got to be on it in your defensive system to be able to defend it.”
Kelsey’s metaphor fits in more ways than one. Duke’s ability to reverse momentum on the court has become a trend this season — but the team seems incapable of unleashing its full potential until after a flood.
Last week, Auburn jumped to a 13-2 start in just under four minutes of play. Then, the Cardinals clung to a lead for nearly three-quarters of Sunday’s game. Even Seattle held the Blue Devils basket-for-basket for nearly 10 minutes. Though Duke walked away with the win in all of those contests, the slow starts still bruise.
“It's not our goal to get down 13-2 against Auburn and then to get down 14 to them [Louisville] and Kansas,” Jon Scheyer said. “I've spent many nights thinking about it.”
Duke shot a measly 27.8% from the 3-point line in the first half of the Louisville game; the Cardinals pulled ahead by sinking similar shots at a 50% clip. Facing another case of the basket blinders, the Blue Devils stayed within reach mostly thanks to nine quiet points from Caleb Foster and a superb defensive showing from Maliq Brown.
Hope lingered despite the sluggish start. Against Auburn, Duke improved its field-goal percentage by more than 10% between periods. Against Arizona, a 5% bump in 3-point success propelled the team to success.
“Every team's goal is to come out and hit first,” Scheyer said. “Our thing is, no matter what, whether you come out to a great start or not, it's about how you play the rest of the 36 minutes.”
The Blue Devils made the rest of their minutes count in the KFC Yum! Center. They re-emerged from the locker room and improved their field-goal clip by a whopping 18.8% — while also staunching the Cardinals’ 3-point success by 30%. Tyrese Proctor and Cooper Flagg both found venerable shooting consistency, while Brown and Flagg grabbed a collective 16 rebounds to outnumber the team’s total first-half boards. Scheyer’s squad had started playing a whole different game.
“We felt like we settled too much early, and we had to just get back to what we were doing, playing second, third side and getting in the paint,” Proctor said.
Even Kelsey commended the shift.
“You give Duke credit,” he said. “They stepped up in a crucial part of the game and got some stops and made some really, really big shots.”
The win against Louisville marked the largest deficit the Blue Devils have overcome since a 16-point lag against Boston College in 2021 — and therefore the biggest statistical victory in Scheyer’s head-coach tenure at Duke. Any slow-start ship is still bound to capsize eventually.
“I think our team has developed a tough mentality to be able to overcome those moments,” Scheyer said. “But it's going to bite us if we keep doing it.”
Just look back at the Kansas game, which Duke dropped after failing to overcome a similarly daunting 13-point lag. The Blue Devils didn’t find a meaningful lead against Louisville until halfway through the second period, despite a second consecutive double-double from Flagg and four players posting double-digit points. If the team can’t start finding momentum earlier, it’s bound to struggle as the season progresses.
Kelsey’s comparison to Noah’s Ark contains a fitting warning: With more storms on the horizon, Duke must either build faster or risk being washed away.
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Abby DiSalvo is a Trinity sophomore and assistant Blue Zone editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.