Duke Mid-Season Grades, Part 1
Nolan Smith [A-]
I know its tempting to give Smith an A of higher, but his field goal & 3-point percentage (48% & 34%) are too low for the teams leading scorer. There are games when he takes too many ill-advised shots and ends up with Iverson like numbers from the floor (5-of-18, 6-of-22, 6-of-17). Don’t even get me started on the turnovers, more than 3 a game with an assist-to-turnover ratio under 1.8.
On the upside, he’s a great on the floor leader and someone you want with the ball in his hands at the end of the game (95% free throw shooter in ACC play). He’s also a great defender. He often ends up defending the other teams best perimeter player -he recently shutdown BC’s Reggie Jackson- and hasn’t been exposed on the defensive end all season.
He would probably get an A if he were still among the country’s top 5 players, but a low 3-point % and high turnovers in a weak ACC has dropped from the ranks of First-Team All-Americans.
Andre Dawkins [B-]
Dawkins was one of the two players talked about as making the biggest strides in the off-season, and he has. He is slowly making the transition from 3-point assassin to a more rounded player. Last year, it was all 3′s all the time, now if someone is flying out on him he will ball fake, step inside and take the easy 15-footer or go all the way to the hoop.
He makes sure he finds the open spots on the floor when Duke is in transition and makes teams pay for leaving him alone (almost 45% from 3 this year). If his game continues to progress at this rate, he could make a B or B+ by the end of the year.
Kyle Singler [B+]
Singler hasn’t quite lived up to the pre-season Player of the Year candidate everyone was expecting, and his averages (17.9 & 6.3) aren’t bad, but they aren’t a leap over last years numbers. Just like last year, he isn’t the Duke player most talked about as POY in the early part of the season, but all Duke fans hope that his season arc follows last season. He got better and better all year long and saved his best for very end of the season.
Most of his games follow that path as well. In games where he shoots poorly in the first half, its not strange to see him end up with 20 or more points. Like Smith, he wants the ball at the end of the game and is more than willing to take (and make) the big shots at the end of the game. He is also very adept at making the ‘dagger’ shots, baskets that crush the spirit of the other team. Just ask NC State.
Ryan Kelly [B-]
It would be nice to rate him higher, but we have to grade Kelly on the entire season, not just the last two weeks. Just like Dawkins, he was one of two players that had made the greatest strides during the off-season. It looks like those reports were true, it’s just taken a little longer for him to show.
He is barely a sophomore (he scored just 6 points in the ACC last season), so he’s really only got 20 meaningful games under his belt.
Kelly appears to be ‘getting it’, he’s too slow to play the 3 and not strong enough to play the 4, but he’s carving out a niche as a 3.5 in the Duke offense. He has the ability to pull out his defenders opens the middle for the driving guards because he is a good enough shooter to demand respect (45% from 3-point range). He is smart enough to get himself into the offense by finding open spots on the floor. You don’t make 18 straight shots by having a defender in your face all the time.
He could climb as high as B+ with a good second half of the season.
Duke Crushed By St Johns
An ass-whooping, a butt-kicking, call it what you like, the Duke Blue Devils game against St. John’s on Sunday was a complete boondoggle.
Down 21 at half, Duke, to paraphrase Bull Durham “couldn’t hit water if they fell out of a #&$@$ boat.” They did nothing right in the first half. They couldn’t handle the press, they didn’t rebound, they were turned over too many times, etc. You name an aspect of the game, they were outplayed in it.
The Red Storm was too quick for Duke all day long, shredding the Blue Devil defense and forcing them into too many turnovers. Then, when Duke was forced to press, the St John’s quickness was instrumental in breaking it and getting easy baskets. The Duke big men were outclassed, they were running behind their men, getting beat off the dribble and allowed too many unimpeded drives to the hoop.
It was the kind of game where nothing goes right, every tipped ball went out off Duke, every loose ball ended up in St John’s hands, the threes weren’t going down. When nothing goes right AND you get out played like Duke did, you should feel lucky that they only lost by 15.
All the haters are going to come out and say that Duke was overrated, the ACC sucks, Coach K is a rat face, they lost because the refs called the game fairly, blah blah blah. They will say that St. John’s should be ranked higher than Duke because they beat them, but, by that logic, shouldn’t Northwestern be number 2 since they lost to number 1 Ohio State by a single point?
Say whatever you want, this game was an aberration, a bump in the road. Duke will not start 1-of-21 from three again this decade. Duke lost to a bad NC State team last season by 14 and still managed to win the National Championship. I will put money down that Duke will go further in the NCAAs at the end of the year than your team.
If there was an upside, it was that Duke continued to play hard for the entire 40 minutes, eventually making the game closer than it was. The only thing that bothered me was that I saw Tyler Thornton sitting on the bench unmoving, head held low, seemingly uninterested in the game near the end.
Duke has a big test on Wednesday as they travel to Maryland, who always plays them tough. If Duke plays like this against the Terps expect a similar outcome and a two-game losing streak.
Duke v Boston College Preview
The Duke Blue Devils welcome the Boston College Eagles to Cameron Indoor on Thursday night in a game that could go far to deciding the ACC Player of the Year.
The top two point scorers and assist men meet in one of the best head-to-head match ups of the ACC season.
Duke Senior Nolan Smith leads the conference in points (20.1) and assists (5.6), BC Junior Reggie Jackson is second in both categories (19.1 & 4.9). Jackson has the edge over Smith in field goal shooting percentage (.526 to .480) and 3-point shooting (.458 to .341).
Expect them to be guarding each other for a good part of the evening in what should be a good one-on-one battle. They are both quick and athletic on the defensive end.
The Eagles are coming off a 16-point loss at the hands of Florida State, the same team that beat Duke two weeks ago.
“We didn’t play extremely well, necessarily,” BC coach Steve Donahue said, referring to his team’s performance in the 67-51 loss in his weekly ACC teleconference on Monday, “but I think Florida State had a lot to do with that.”
BC is fourth in the ACC, a game behind Duke and they are looking for huge signature win for their NCAA resume, but they have history against them.
BC’s record against Duke is 2-12. In Cameron Indoor Stadium, the Eagles are 0-5. BC will be looking for its first win over a top-10 team since 2009.
With Kansas losing at home earlier this week, Duke has the longest home winning streak in college basketball at 30.
Duke/Wake Forest Preview
In a year when the ACC is down and there is a log jam of teams fighting for NCAA bids, two teams have separated themselves from the other ten.
It is universally accepted that the Duke Blue Devils are the best and the Wake Forest Demon Deacons are the worst teams in the ACC. Duke is 17-1 and 4-1 in the ACC, while Wake Forest is 7-12 and 0-4 in conference. The only win over a major conference team that Wake Forest owns is 76-73 victory, at home, over Iowa, who is 0-6 in the Big 10.
They meet on Saturday at 4pm at Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Wake Forest.
Duke comes in still trying to find an offensive identity without Kyrie Irving, even though they have played more games without him (10), than with him (8). Since the loss at Florida State, they’ve played three good halves (out of four) and have made strides in trying to get their big men more involved in the offense.
In the previous game against NC State, the trio of Duke big men, played their best collective game of the season. They look to expand on that against a Wake Forest team that is small on the inside. The Demon Deacons have only two players over 6-8, a pair of seven-footers, freshman Carson Desrosiers and junior Ty Walker, who sub each other at center.
The Wake Forest duo average just 7.6 points and 7.9 rebounds a game, but do block almost 5 shots a game. They may prove a problem for the Duke big men who haven’t faced a real shot blocking threat all season.
Also, expect to see the Duke freshman, Tyler Thornton and Josh Hairston, continue to get 6-8 minutes a game as Coach K searches for a rotation that works. This is hardly the Wake Forest team of years past and Duke should have no problem picking up a road win.
Duke by 23.
Duke Bigs Grow Against NC State
The past two games have seen an improvement inside for the Duke Blue Devils as the three big men are getting more comfortable in their roles; as rebounders and occasional scorers.
At the beginning of the season everyone, myself included, were expecting huge offensive numbers from the trio of Miles & Mason Plumlee and Ryan Kelly, when they didn’t materialize we started questioning what was wrong with them.
In fact, nothing is wrong with them. We just didn’t give them a chance.
Should we really have expected double-doubles from three guys who have barely played a full season between them? None of them had been asked to be any part of the offense last season, and now we want them to call for the ball down low and have the offense run through them? Not gonna happen.
Last season the Plumlees playing time was mostly as second stringers behind Brian Zoubek & Lance Thomas and Kelly’s time was non-existant (he had just 6 points in ACC play). How could we in our right mind expect anything more than a year of struggles from these guys? Plus, you have two All-Americans and the number one freshman point guard on your team. How many touches would you give to a trio of untested big men? About as many as I get per game.
Not being called upon to score last year has slowed their progress this season as they look for ways to get involved in the offense. They are getting there. They are taking -and making- more shots in recent games.
The win against NC State was the best collective game for the big men this season. 29 points (11-of-16), 26 rebounds, eight blocks and just four fouls. Without them Duke wouldn’t have won last night’s game.
It was Miles who played best, escaping Coach Ks doghouse. He scored 11 points and had eight rebounds, including a couple of big offensive rebounds and baskets in the second half after NC State cut the lead to five. Clearly his recent time on the pine (just 10 minutes in his last two games) lit a fire under the junior.
Kelly added the same (11 & 
including 2-of-2 three-pointers, Mason led the team with 10 rebounds and six blocks and all three big men contributed to NC State shooting 22% in the first half, allowing Duke to build a 14 point lead. They also helped Duke out rebound NC State by 10, who were the ACC leaders in rebounding margin coming into the game.
Should we think that a renaissance has begun in Durham because of the big man play in the past two games? No.
Will there be some setbacks? Of course.
Will they continue to evolve into their roles? Yes.
If they find their roles like last years bigs no one if going to care what their numbers are if there is a fifth banner in the rafters of Cameron Indoor.
