The answer does not need to be a complete turn from the shot, but the Blue Devils have to start taking advantage of their top-tier defense and get inside on offense, rather than settle for 3-pointers.
I want to address wary fans with some good news. Amidst some sameness, there’s a change in this year’s Groundhog Day programming. To complement yet another top-ranked recruiting class, Duke added valuable pieces in the portal — Mason Gillis from Purdue, Sion James from Tulane, Maliq Brown from Syracuse — who will all likely see substantial minutes.
Flagg is widely projected to follow in Williamson’s footsteps by being selected first overall in next year’s NBA Draft, even before he’s played a single official minute of college basketball. Yet, the comparisons between Flagg and Williamson should end there. Not only are they two completely distinct players, but each arrived in Durham under wildly different circumstances.
I will accept a moral victory as good — great, even — for this version of Duke football. SMU came into Saturday’s contest as an 11.5-point favorite, and a win is a win, but it leaves Durham with significant questions. Meanwhile for the Blue Devils, there are wins to be salvaged in an otherwise heartbreaking loss.
Factoring in the general lack of high-end competition Duke has faced, things could go downhill fast when the Blue Devils play against more talented ACC opponents.
Analytics tell a largely positive story about Murphy through three games. However, in such a statistics-heavy sport like football, it’s never that simple. What is Murphy’s true impact on the Duke offense, and what is his ceiling at quarterback according to advanced statistics?
Despite the drastic changes in roster composition, Duke is positioned to go far — even more so than last year.
We throw around the term “players’ coach” a lot, but it's clear that Scheyer’s presence makes a difference and he clearly has his team’s respect.
The Blue Devils’ two-game skid is concerning. Nobody wants to enter March looking to rebound. But it’s important to consider the bigger picture: The actual crop of teams playing A-1 basketball right now is thin.
Their intensity has kept them competitive with highly ranked teams, stifling even some of the country’s strongest offensive efforts. From the beginning of the season, both fans and opponents of the Blue Devils recognized, and admired, this defensive prowess.
Fifteen-point deficits after eight minutes of play are not individual, and they are incredibly difficult to come back from. Scheyer’s squad was so close it could taste it — but it couldn’t quite cross that bridge. This was a whole-team loss, and you could feel it as you walked into the locker room.
If, for the sake of argument, you put aside the Final Four classic in April 2022, when was the last time that these two teams met in the regular season with the stakes as high as they will be Saturday night? The Blue Devils and Tar Heels are playing for more than bragging rights this time around.
From his hiring, when he said that “now is the time for Duke football,” Elko was supposed to be the guy to bring the Blue Devils into national prominence. But he nonetheless decided to leave, and leaves a complicated question behind him. What now?
Duke optimists might purport this road loss as a hiccup in the early part of a season that has plenty of time to turn itself around and become a successful one. Or maybe, Duke is, in its current form, far from contending with the wide world of college basketball that exists away from the Atlantic coast.
On Nov. 20, Elko said “We’re probably about 13 days away from complete anarchy and the Wild West. It’s literally open free agency for all of college football.” With his departure, that statement could not be any more true than right now in Durham.
The Blue Devils currently sit having regressed to their historic mean. Duke went from a potential marquee postseason matchup to a middling one. The season, for all intents and purposes, is over.
For everything that made the loss to North Carolina a brutal validation of the old adage “it’s the hope that kills you,” there was just as much if not more that made me optimistic about this team’s future.
To be entirely honest, I stand ready to call this season a wash. But the reason that it feels like this team has dipped so low on the metaphorical roller coaster is just because it started so high.
What people mean when they say that Duke is a basketball school is that it is a men's basketball school. The Cameron Crazies have not kept up with the increasing interest in women's basketball across the country.
After being battered, bruised and limited by now-surgically repaired hips for most of last season, Filipowski is back for another round in Durham. And this time, he's keen to make sure he's the one doing the bruising.
