Jacobs: Duke treading familiar thin ice
Feb 6, 2009
A 20-win season once was celebrated as a milestone, the sinecure of basketball success. Those days are gone. Now, when an elite program secures its 20th victory of the year, as North Carolina did the other night against Maryland, it elicits barely a ripple of recognition.
So, when 19-3 Duke gets its next win, perhaps tomorrow against Miami, the achievement itself will be treated as a statistical afterthought, lost in a larger story.
Certainly that story includes the Blue Devils’ stunning 74-47 collapse at Clemson on Wednesday, the program's largest margin of defeat since a 30-point rout by UNLV in the 1990 national championship game. But how Mike Krzyzewski’s squad responds to the immediate crisis – a blow to Duke’s pride and confidence as well as its ranking – is less important than what was revealed.
“You just have to figure out what the personality of your team is,” Krzyzewski said after the Devils crushed sadly ineffectual Virginia last weekend. “We’re still trying to figure it out.”
Whatever that personality, a more basic issue was raised by recent results at Wake Forest and Clemson, which shockingly took Duke’s heart, the same heart manifest in a strong second-half comeback at Joel Coliseum on Jan. 28. The lingering question is simply whether the current Blue Devils sufficiently differ from their most immediate predecessors to escape a similar fate.
We are just at that point of the season where the last two Duke teams, long on perimeter prowess and short on inside height and strength, began to founder.
The 2007 squad started 18-3, rising to 8th in the polls as February dawned. Then Duke dropped eight of its final dozen games, capped by first-round exits from the ACC and NCAA tournaments. Junior guard Jon Scheyer, whose shooting touch has become as elusive as bipartisanship in Congress, sports a scar under his eye from a blow incurred during Duke’s stunning NCAA loss to Virginia Commonwealth.
The ’07 season ended with a Krzyzewski team unranked for the first time in 11 years.
The 2008 squad started 22-1, rising to second in the polls in early February. Observers marveled at Duke’s ability to win by relying so heavily on its defense and perimeter scoring. Mostly by default Kyle Singler, essentially a big wing, shouldered much of the burden inside.
But Singler and the Devils lost half of their final dozen games, fading to an impressive but nonetheless disappointing 28-6 finish. The 2008 season ended with exits two games into both the ACC and NCAA tournaments.
This season began with Singler touting greater strength and stamina, and with Krzyzewski tweaking his offense and deepening his playing rotation. Lance Thomas, Brian Zoubek, and Miles Plumlee shared the center’s spot, with 6-6 David McClure providing regular defensive support inside and out.
Overall, Duke’s defense was excellent, prosecuted fiercely and intelligently by a unit in which two-thirds of the regulars are upperclassmen. The Blue Devils have been in the top 10 all season, led the ACC early, and were the nation’s No.1 team when they lost at Joel Coliseum.
Then came the pratfall at Clemson, and suddenly the Duke contingent stands at a familiar juncture, the aura of early success all but gone. Fortunately, this is the moment to regroup; the fourth-ranked Devils face Miami and North Carolina in consecutive games at Cameron Indoor Stadium before venturing on the road for five of their last seven regular-season contests.
In the contented aftermath of the UVa win, Greg Paulus insisted Duke’s veterans had learned their lessons from the hardships of 2007 and 2008. “Having these guys go through these things that we went through together, it brings a bond,” said the senior. “We’ve been in all types of situations -- game situations, off the court situations -- so we’ve kind of been through it all. We’re hoping that we’ve made our share of mistakes before and we can capitalize on them now.”
The taming by the Tigers suggests otherwise. So do the struggles of Singler, Duke’s best-rounded player.
The Devils’ big men have been erratic, sometimes from game to game and sometimes within the same outing. Duke has been outrebounded in three of its last seven games, and enjoys no edge on the boards against ACC opponents. Certainly Clemson’s Trevor Booker, who had 21 points and 8 rebounds in 29 minutes, took advantage of Duke’s soft underbelly.
This weakness has yielded a problematic repeat of the strategic compromise Krzyzewski made last year: Singler is increasingly deployed inside, where the 6-8 sophomore is again showing signs of wearing down.
A decline in offensive production, particularly on a squad that foremost stresses expending energy on defense, is a telltale mark of fatigue. Singler missed 9 of 15 shots while getting 14 rebounds in a rough contest at Georgia Tech. He had 16 rebounds against Georgetown, but made only 7 of 19 from the floor. Over the Devils’ past seven games, Singler has hit 33 of 87 shots, 37.9 percent.
Singler’s outside shooting is also suffering, perhaps signifying tired legs. He’s made 9 of 32 from 3-point range since visiting Georgia Tech, 28.1 percent accuracy. The last time he made a three was with 5:24 remaining as Duke mounted its futile rally at Wake Forest.
Of course most players are prone to ebbs and flows, and no player operates in isolation. But with Scheyer in search of the basket, point guard Nolan Smith alternately solid and overwhelmed, Gerald Henderson erring on defense, and the inside game hit-and-miss, the Dukies have little margin for error.
The Blue Devils can only hope that, when they cracked against Clemson, they were not stepping through the same ice that chilled their last two seasons.
