Duke PG Jon Scheyer. (AP)
The Blue Devils are back.
After a five year hiatus that did not see them advance past the Sweet 16, Duke is in the Final Four and again considered the favorite to win it all. Coach K, his defense and three dynamic scorers are the driving force behind the Blue Devils return to what used to feel like a birth right for the Cameron Crazies.
Are the stars aligned for a fourth Blue Devils national title. Here’s a closer look at Duke.
Coach: Mike Krzyzewski (20th year)
Record: 33-5, 13-3 ACC
Final Fours: 15 (1963, 1964, 1966, 1978, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2010), 3 championships (1991, 1992, 2001)
Iconic Coach K : Krzyzewski is 75-22 in the NCAA tournament, the second highest winning percentage among coaches all-time.
How They Got Here
Duke shared the regular season ACC title with Maryland and won the conference tournament championship, earning the No. 1 seed in the South Regional.
First Round: No. 16 Arkansas-Pine Bluff got itself one NCAA tournament victory this year, having won the play-in game three days before facing Duke. The Blue Devils made sure the Golden Lions didn’t come close to a second thanks to the 73-44 dismantling they unloaded on the SWAC champs.
Second Round: Duke’s defense stifled No. 8 Cal, holding the Bears to only 39 percent shooting from the field, as the Blue Devils cruised to an easy 68-53 victory. Duke’s size was too much for the vertically-challenged Bears to overcome. Nolan Smith led the way with 20 points.
Sweet 16: In a grinding game that was ugly to watch, Duke outlasted No. 4 Purdue, 70-57, to move onto the South Regional final. The Blue Devils did it with defense and the combo of Jon Scheyer and Kyle Singler. The two scorers poured in 18 and 24, respectively, while Purdue struggled to come up with any answer for Duke’s superior size underneath. The two teams combined for just 47 points in the first half assuring this game’s place amongst the round of 16′s all-time ugliest contests.
Elite Eight: A career-high 29 points from Smith helped carry the Blue Devils into the Final Four after they trailed No. 3 Baylor late into the second half. The Bears carried a three point lead into halftime and led by just as many with under four minutes to play but couldn’t hold on in the end, falling to Duke, 78-71. Thanks to Smith, some clutch 3-pointers by Scheyer and 17 offensive rebounds in the second half, Duke advanced to Indianapolis, removing the 800-pound guerrilla that had been sitting on the collective backs of Coach K and his players since 2004.
Why They Can Win It All
Offensively speaking, the Blue Devils should be considered the best team of the Final Four participants. Duke has big time scorers in Scheyer and Singler who can knock down the three with regularity while Smith can do a little bit of it all and is the most athletic of the three. Scheyer, Singler and Smith combined average a little over 52 points per game – about 2/3 of the team’s average points per game. And while they may not be a great rebounding team, as we pointed out yesterday, Ken Pomeroy says the Blue Devils are a very good offensive rebounding team – which we clearly saw against Baylor. The Blue Devils will need to capitalize on second chance opportunities against a very good defensive team in West Virginia, their opponent for Saturday’s second national semifinal game. But as good as West Virginia is defensively, the Blue Devils are right there with them. Pomeroy’s ratings pin the Blue Devils as the nation’s third most efficient defense while West Virginia’s comes in at No. 10. Sometimes Pomeroy’s numbers can be a little misleading – he’s admitted that Duke is probably overrated when it comes to his ratings this year – but it goes to show you how tough it is to score against this Blue Devils team. They have size underneath with Brian Zoubek and the Plumlee brothers and just seem to do a really good job of hounding opponents. They’re good at turning teams over and are allowing opponents to shoot just 27 percent from 3-point range. While this definitely is not Coach K’s most staked team during his long tenure, this relatively “weak” Final Four field puts Duke in prime position to capture another title. It’s pretty obvious to see why they’re the favorite. They have a coach who has been to the Final Four more than any other active coach and pedigree that gives them added swagger.
Why They Won’t
I’ve gone on record as saying this Duke team wouldn’t reach the Final Four and that obviously did not come to fruition. I’ve been adamant all season long that the Blue Devils aren’t very athletic and at some point would get exposed in the tournament for that. Clearly the matchups benefited Duke up until the Baylor game. The Bears were a team built to beat the Blue Devils with its size, athleticism in the backcourt and 2-3 zone defense. The Blue Devils managed to survive and advance but they are a team that does not hit a very high percentage of their 2-point attempts. In fact, Pomeroy says they get less than 50 percent of their points from 2-point attempts, an unusually low number for such a good team. And not a characteristic you generally associate with a champion. They’re overly reliant on the 3-point shot which at some point a team will die by – see Kentucky in the Elite Eight. I still think Duke can be bodied around and physically handled. None of the remaining teams are that big, bruising and physically more imposing than the Blue Devils, but West Virginia certainly comes closest to fitting that category.
