The Duke Blue Devils defeated the South Dakota Coyotes by 16 on Saturday at Cameron Indoor Stadium. It was Duke’s first home game since November 20th and their fifth game in nine days.
This game can be chalked up as one of those “throw away the tape” games.
Duke coasted to an early lead (at one point it was Grayson Allen-15, South Dakota-15) and never really looked back. They shot 41.2% from three, which is much better than there 32.6% from three on the season. Allen led the team with 25 points, Marvin Bagley had another double double with 19 and 12 rebounds and Javin DeLaurier led the bench in scoring with 13 points.
This was a tough watch. Once Duke got their lead they seemed to just punt the game. They looked unmotivated and ready to get their Saturday nights started. South Dakota even outscored Duke by 10 in the second half. Duke had 19 turnovers in the game, nine more than South Dakota.
Here’s my observation for the game.
You can’t play like this. You beat Michigan State without Bagley. You came back against Texas. You came back against Florida. You beat Indiana in your first true road test. Beating South Dakota by only 16 and playing as loose as you did in the second half is unacceptable for a team with this much youth.
Now maybe I’m overreacting to something miniscule. This team hasn’t played well for a majority of their big time matchups. They weren’t good for 30 minutes against Texas. They were bad for 32-34 minutes against Florida. They weren’t great against Indiana for 80% of the game. No matter how talented this particular Duke team is, not locking in for 40 minutes is going to end up costing them.
How many times have Duke fans been on the wrong side of jokes for early exits in the tournament? That’s exactly what’s going to happen again if this team can’t figure out how to play 40 minutes of high intensity basketball.
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I get it though. It’s South Dakota and you’re finally playing in front of your home crowd after a couple of big wins. You should have beat this team by 30. This shouldn’t be only a 16 point win. South Dakota outplayed you in the second half and you didn’t seem to care. That’s the troubling part about this Duke team. For all of the good wins we’ve seen this year so far, there needs to be a complete game and it needs to be soon.
ACC play is unforgiving and as the number one team in the nation, Duke will have the targets on their backs all season.