Duke battled against ACC foes this week, picking up 2 crucial conference road wins.  Oddly, I think the most significant win was taking care of business against Clemson on the road after winning two emotional revenge games earlier in the week.  That had all the makings of a trap game, with the Tigers flying high after beating Wake Forest at home and interest in their program sky-high at the moment.  Conference play is less about making a statement than surviving, and while Duke exhibited flaws in all three games, they were able to overcome their problems with extraordinary efforts in other phases of the game.  They overcame foul trouble against Wake by shooting the lights out, overcame offensive sloppiness against Maryland with suffocating defense, and defensive problems against Clemson with smart game management and hard work at the foul line.  While the Devils aren’t a dominant team, no opponent has been able to put together the kind of complete performance needed to knock Duke off.

    Wake had beaten Duke three years in a row at home, and they were extremely hyped up to close out Duke’s senior class.  In this game, Duke had to overcome horrible foul trouble and Wake stars Justin Gray & Eric Williams.   The Deacs held all sort of statistical advantages in this game: they were +7 on the boards, +16 in points in the paint, +13 in second-chance points and +4 in fast break points.  Duke usually makes up for some deficits by forcing more turnovers than their opponent, but both teams had 16 miscues leading to 24 points.  Shelden Williams matched E. Williams with 6 early points, but he picked up 3 quick fouls. Wake did a lot of damage with all of Duke’s fouls, going 12-14 from the line and forcing Duke to change its defensive schemes.  Given all of these advantages, why did Wake struggle?

    First off, they fell behind Duke in the early going.  Every time they got close, Duke would go on a mini-run to keep them at arm’s length. Second, they focused on stopping penetration (forcing Greg Paulus into 6 turnovers as a result of the pressure) and Duke’s post game, but the result of that was giving Duke all of the open looks they wanted from long range.  Wake trailed by just 3 six minutes into the game, but it took just two minutes for Duke to uncork a 12-2 run with 4 threes. Suddenly, the Deacs trailed by double digits, despite forcing Duke to go small.  Wake would go on another run to pull within 7, but back-to-back threes kept them behind.

    Interestingly, while JJ Redick did drop a couple of threes during this run (including one from 25 feet!), it was Lee Melchionni who led the way with 3 threes.  For the game, Duke shot a crazy 14-28 from three, with five different players hitting at least one trey.  When Duke got its big lead, Coach K used judicious substitutions (including Jamal Boykin, Patrick Johnson and the returning DeMarcus Nelson) and spread the court to try and shorten the half.  While that worked nicely in getting Duke to the second half with a lead, it also had the happy side effect of enervating both Wake’s team and its fans.  The slowed-down pace forced Wake to play patient defense instead of increasing the tempo to a pace that fit their hurry-up comeback mode. Wake did cut into Duke’s lead a few teams in the first half, but Duke responded and led by 13 with less than two minutes to go (thanks in part to Boykin drawing a technical foul from E.Williams).  Wake closed within 6 points, but Redick hit a cold-blooded three with less than 2 seconds to go in the half.

    Williams picked up his fourth foul early in the second half and Wake took advantage, pulling within 51-48.  After a Paulus score (his offensive aggressiveness was a big plus for the Devils, scoring 10 points), Wake turned Duke over and Trent Strickland was on his way to an uncontested basket.  However, he missed a fancy reverse dunk and Josh McRoberts alertly grabbed the rebound and fired an outlet pass to Redick, who coolly drained a three.  Duke forced a  stop, ran the clock down, and then got a three from McRoberts to go up 59-48.  Wake never threatened again after that.

    Redick had his usual dominant offensive game with 32 points on 12-21 shooting.  With Shelden out, JJ felt the pressure to keep Duke ahead, and he was certainly up for the challenge.  However, Duke had 4 players in double figures.  Shelden never did pick up his fifth foul, and his presence gave Duke a nice target down the stretch.  Lee not only dropped 17 points on Wake, he also picked up 5 boards along with an assist, steal & block (!).  The announcers noted that Lee always tends to play well against Wake, and that probably has less to do with his reacting to a lot of tie-dye shirts in the stands than the way Wake defends Duke. Skip Prosser wants to stop penetration first and foremost (hence Paulus’ problems driving into the defense), control the post game and force Duke to become a jump-shooting team.  While they threw every defense imaginable at Redick in an effort to slow him, that left Lee open more often than not.  Lee’s struggles in some respects were not unusual for a senior role player.  He came into the season feeling his oats after his success last year, and the result was him taking some bad shots and too many of them.  When other players started to eat into his minutes, he tightened up and started missing shots he was hitting last year.  Playing against familiar ACC opponents I believe gave Lee a comfort level that allowed him to relax and hit open shots without forcing too much.

    Of course, the unsung hero of this game was Nelson.  While his stats don’t leap out at you (2 points, 1 assist, 2 turnovers) and he had a dumb turnover, he was crucial to Duke’s win.  When Duke was losing players left and right in the first half, Markie stabilized things and even threw down a dunk on a lob from McRoberts.  In the second half, he played almost exclusively in the post, and his job was to deny Eric Williams the ball.  While only 6-3, his long arms, strength, quickness and leaping ability make him quite comfortable inside, and he forced Wake to drive and shoot jumpers rather than take advantage of Duke’s foul trouble inside.  Furthermore, Nelson’s ability to play inside allowed Melchionni to shift back to his natural wing position rather than have to battle inside.

      Basketball is all about matchups.  I knew that Wake didn’t have the guard play to really hurt Duke with penetration, nor the defensive toughness to shut Duke down when needed.  Maryland came into Cameron as the top offensive team in the league, with five players averaging in double figures.   However, they lacked a dominant scoring point guard and post players who could set up on their own.  Still, the Terps had won three in a row and imposed their will on Duke each time.

    Duke matched up well with the Terps at all positions, however, and took advantage of this fact by smothering them at the defensive end. Helpfully for Duke, the game was called loosely, allowing Shel & Sean to go nuts with shotblocking and ball pressure.  Duke forced 19 first-half turnovers and held the Terps to under 30% from the floor.  Duke got off to a 9-2 start, then pushed that to 26-11 with some frenetic defense. Redick started off cold but nailed a couple of threes late in the half and Duke led by 22 points.  Amazingly, the Devils should have been up by even more.  Duke missed some easy looks and their frenetic pace led to some turnovers and related mistakes.  Williams had 10 points, 7 boards, 4 blocks and 2 steals in the first half alone, while Dockery had 3 steals of his own.  One of the biggest difference-makers in the half was Nelson.  He blew an early dunk in traffic, but rebounded by hitting 2 treys and wreaking havoc on the defensive end.  The Terps were not prepared for his quick hands and aggressiveness.  The unselfish Nelson also had 2 assists, and the second one revealed his strength in this lineup.  He had an offensive rebound and dished to Redick for a crushing three.  His ability to grab offensive boards is a skill that no one else in the lineup really possesses, given his combination of aggressiveness, power and quickness. Fortunately, the injury he sustained in this game was a minor one, because he can be a significant x-factor for Duke against many opponents.

    Duke got a bit sloppy in the second half and the Terps cut a 26 point lead to just 17.  But Dockery drove for a score and Paulus found Williams on an inbounds play for an easy score, and that was that. Redick,, Dockery and Williams combined for 27 of Duke’s 31 second-half points as Shelden compiled a triple-double.   What was amazing about this game is that Maryland scored 23 points off Duke turnovers, meaning that they scored just 29 points in their base offense against Duke!  My favorite play of the game came when McRoberts caught a long outlet pass and tiptoed on the baseline to avoid turning the ball over.  Two Maryland defenders surrounded him in an effort to force him to turn the ball over.  Josh kept his cool and flipped the ball behind him to a trailing Shelden Williams for an easy dunk.  The play demonstrated how much more comfortable Josh is on the floor, even when he’s not throwing down dunks.

    It was easy for Duke to get up for Wake and Maryland; both had scored bitter victories over Duke last year, and the players were motivated to avenge those defeats.  Clemson was another matter.  The Tigers last beat Duke when Wojo was a junior guard and Shane Battier was a senior in high school.  Clemson scored a 1-point victory against Wake earlier in the week and had a number of football recruits in town for the weekend, giving the Tigers a crowd ready to celebrate an upset.  One reason why Duke was able to win with relative ease against Wake & Maryland is that they built a working margin early in the game, taking advantage of lapses from their opponents.  Clemson dominated Duke so decidedly in some areas that it was very difficult to do this, but Duke used balance, unselfishness and toughness in its favor, and took advantage of the opportunities that Clemson handed them.

    At the same time, the well-coached Tigers did the same.  Oliver Purnell is a very sharp leader who used his personnel to attack Duke’s vulnerabilities.  In particular, he used his quick guards to attack Duke with dribble penetration.  In particular, Vernon Hamilton was spectacular in the way he used any gap he found to get his shot off in traffic.  He shot over Duke’s bigs, drove by the guards and pulled up for short jumpers.  No matter what Duke did, they couldn’t stop him.  The Devils had other problems: Clemson sent several guys to the offensive boards and punished Duke with 19 offensive rebounds and 23 second chance points.   The fact that the Tigers didn’t get more scoring from their rebounding was due to the fact that they couldn’t hit a free throw to save their lives. Clemson shot 54% from the field, 36% from three and a gruesome 29% from the foul line.

    In the early going, Duke held slim leads because Sean Dockery got some runouts and Redick was able to find ways to score.  Still, the Tigers kept things close, with Duke’s foul trouble putting them in a tight spot.  Without the luxury of having DeMarcus Nelson around to help on defense, they could only do so much with Clemson’s guard-oriented lineup.  Four Duke players had 2 first-half fouls, but the Tigers could only hit 3-13 from the line.  With five minutes left, Clemson led 31-30, but Redick countered with a three and a transition basket to quiet the crowd.  However, Duke couldn’t get a real run going to take control.  In the last minute of the half, Paulus found Boykin for a score (in for Williams) and then hit 2 freebies to put Duke up by 8, but Clemson scored shortly before the half ended to keep it close.

    In the second half, Duke did a much better job of keeping the Tigers off the foul line.  Duke kept the pressure on  and broke into a double-digit lead five minutes into the half, thanks to 4 points apiece from Redick & Williams.  Clemson would not be broken, and they kept using dribble penetration and stickbacks to hang close.  With nine minutes to go, they crept within 64-60 but Duke responded with a play designed for an easy Williams dunk and then Redick hit 2 foul shots.  Later, a Williams block led to a Paulus hitting Redick in transition, giving Duke a 10 point lead with under six to go.

    Back came Hamilton, who was matching Redick point for point.  Clemson closed to 72-66, but Redick found Williams inside.  The last push came with under two minutes left.  The Tigers made it 76-71, but their full court pressure only led to Redick hitting Dockery in transition.  The Tigers finally started to fall apart and Duke hit their free throws, with Melchionni nailing 4 in a row to put Duke up by double digits once again.  It was all free throws from there, and Duke was defending the three point line with so much determination that there was no way Clemson could get a good shot off.

    While it was not a pretty game, Duke was actually fairly efficient. Five players scored in double digits as Redick hung 34 points on a team that was chasing him around and extending its defense.  He responded by attacking the Tigers off the dribble, taking just 5 three pointers.  He got to the foul line early and often, and though he missed 4 (!) foul shots, he was 9-10 in the second half and got into a nice rhythm.     Williams came back from early foul trouble to play excellent post defense in the second half and pick up yet another double-double, while the trio of Dockery, Paulus and Melchionni all scored 10 points apiece.   With Clemson going to the offensive boards and using a lot of pressure defense, fast break opportunities were there for Duke and they used them, to the tune of a 14-6 advantage.

    Duke is now in a nice schedule rhythm, with a ton of Wednesday/Saturday games coming up. The NC State game is in Cameron next Wednesday, and a win here for Duke will really put them in the driver’s seat in the ACC.  Hopefully Nelson will be available to chase around their players.  At some point, some team will find a way to keep Duke’s shooting low, keep the Devils off the foul line, force some turnovers from them and score some points of their own.  A rematch with Virginia Tech looms ahead, and the game with Florida State will actually be a very difficult matchup.  Boston College’s frontcourt will also be a significant test.  Still, Duke continues to hold serve at 16-0, with only Florida remaining undefeated.

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