Either way, be it in New Orleans or San Francisco or, God forbid, Greenville, the end of the road is approaching for Duke and Mike Krzyzewski, who, as you may have heard, are retiring. Krzyzewski did what he could to dampen the narrative around him in an attempt to keep the focus on his very young team, which earned a No. 2 spot in the tournament with 28-6, a quality campaign in all respects. But as the light shines on the Blue Devils this week, the tenor of the national conversation is that the Duke does not quite have the feeling of a competitor, and that it does not quite play its best basketball at the best time of the year.
After spending the last week watching the Duke in the ACC tournament, this writer can repeat the feeling: The Blue Devils made their way through three tournament games, resisting a barrage of threes from Syracuse in the quarterfinals, a more composed but still struggling to play game against Miami in the semifinals and eventually falling on scalding, confident Virginia Tech with 15 points in a game that is away from them. The Duke bets a Friday at 19:10 ET against Cal State-Fullerton, and goes into the tournament with a few things to figure out, to say the least.
Keels and Banchero will play a big role in determining how far the Blue Devils go.
John Minchillo / AP
One would think that Krzyzewski’s last Duke team has more in the tank, and the hope would be that the majority of the week to prepare there should be some extra juice on the weekends. A victory in the first round would draw the winner from Michigan State (a quasi-rival Duke has struggled with quite a lot over the years) and Davidson (an in-state opponent Duke has not played since in 2013). Up front, and it could be Texas Tech. Past leads the way most likely to a rematch with top overall seed Gonzaga: the Blue Devils are one of only three teams to have taken down the Zags, a neutral site win that still stands as the best indicator of this group’s immense potential.
Duke starts five projected first-round NBA picks, but things are never that simple: The oldest in the group, Wendell Moore Jr., is still 20 years old, as is Mark Williams. Of the three freshmen in the rotation, Paolo Banchero is 19 and Trevor Keels and AJ Griffin are still 18. Remember that the Duke missed the 2021 tournament right away and the fact that there was none in ’20, and you has a team with basically zero tournament experience. Backup center Theo John played 17 minutes during Marquette’s 1919 loss to Murray State and did not score. It is far from the only team with a lack of depth, but John and Jeremy Roach are the only bench players Krzyzewski trusts.
The lack of win-or-go-home spice is certainly not a duke-exclusive issue in the one-and-done era, but it somehow depends on the whole business to project how far the Blue Devils can actually go. In that respect, it’s possibly a good thing that Duke faced off later, dating back to a narratively congested home loss to rivals North Carolina on March 5 and running through the ACC tournament. Some of the cracks were exposed in the process. Krzyzewski and his players agreed that defensive communication was a problem against Virginia Tech’s cavalcade of screens and sets that forced the Duke to constantly switch. That’s something young teams always have to work through, but it’s not great when it’s a fundamental issue deep in the tournament. The Duke was individually imprisoned by Syracuse’s Jimmy Boeheim and the Virginia Tech Hunter Cattoor, struggling to pursue shooters and limit good looks.
The defense uplift falls on everyone, but the Duke simply did not present much toughness or physicality at the end of late. Subbing at Roach for Griffin gives it a bit more toughness in exchange for size and rebounding, a look it uses later in games. But above all, the Blue Devils need to have a better collective presence, and that starts with simple, fixable things.
This can not magically transform into an elite defensive unit, which means the Blue Devils must find a way to maximize their firepower. Duke hasn’t had many macro-level problems shooting the ball this season, with the seventh-best-adjusted efficiency offensive at KenPom taking advantage of the fact that all five of his starting tackles are capable of defending defense problems individually. But problems began to build up when opponents could use the shot clock to their advantage in the halfway point and force the Duke to look better. Both Banchero and Griffin have a tendency to stop the ball to try to create shots, and in particular Griffin tends to fight the drive when he does not launch a jumper. The Duke obviously needs those guys to score, but there needs to be less disruption to players and a little more confidence in the flow of insults. It’s a lot harder to watch when it’s playing inside and out and using Williams and Banchero as targets for easy two.
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What the Duke has are two reliable stars in Moore and Williams, the former struggling at the perimeter and the latter often changing shots and dominating the defensive glass. To get into the transition, the Blue Devils have to get stops, and it can not just be the two guys who drive it. When Williams is not in the game, the Duke not only becomes vulnerable in the paint, but also has difficulty securing the errors and pressing on the open court. Moore is actually the Duke’s best player right now, and his athleticism and vision make him his only real weapon at the break (the trio of Keels, Griffin and Banchero are not all that great on foot). He’s best when the Duke can run. The Moore-Williams duo worked well in the conference tournament overall, and the Duke could afford sick foul problems or a bad game from the two – Williams picked up early fouls and ended up without gas in the loss against Virginia Tech. If there’s one thing that clearly works in Duke’s favor, it is that the two guys do not have many exploitable weaknesses, which gives them a better backbone than most.
Stylistically, Duke is a different team than it was in November, mainly due to the emergence of Griffin, who has played 30 and 36 minutes in the last two games of the Blue Devils (after a son of food poisoning) and was the swing factor in the ‘Miami game with 21 points, including a run of 12 straight by itself. They needed him badly, especially with Keels struggling to find his shot. But when Griffin’s shot does not fall, he tends to disappear into the background because he prefers to do set shots or create for himself on an island, and is no threat to bomb screens or force defenders to chase. The shots he likes do not actually make his team much harder to guard, and in part, the opponents can live with the hard ones. But when they fall, the Duke is hard to beat.
Nevertheless, taking all other constants, it is Banchero who ultimately has the most say in whether the Blue Devils make the Final Four. And it was not all bad with him either: As the season went on, he did a much better job of keeping things simple, his excellent passion allowed him to open things up for teammates, a more concerted effort on the offensive glass and transforms into better efforts on the defensive end.
The theme now from my own observation last week is that he lacks confidence in his jump shot – there is a small hit at the top of Banchero’s release that was not there early in the year, he lacks a lot of free kicks and it can not be enough Time for him to stretch out the folds. These fights sometimes make his tendency to dribble and chase shots so much worse because defenders can cheat the thread and allow him to settle with hard tackles. Teams will live with him taking three moments. Of course, the Banchero we saw against Gonzaga in November is good enough to beat anyone. We’ll see if his current run of form – which was productive, yet a jumper – is enough to keep the scales tapping in a huge game, or if the shot becomes a liability. But the Duke has gone a bit off banchero-at-point-guard looks in the meantime, and his jumper probably has something to do with it.
It is anyone’s guess how many of these topics the Duke can exercise in a week or so to practice. It’s hard to think that Krzyzewski left anything in the tank. Despite pressure, I think, we can reasonably expect the Blue Devils to play pretty damn hard this week, which brings you to a certain point. They are good enough to make the second weekend. But without proper maturation on the fly, their course could be shorter than you think.
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• Frankie Collins puts Michigan back on upswing
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