Duke Basketball: Blue Devils stunned by St. John’s

Duke basketball suffered a huge blow, being shocked by the struggling St. John’s Red Storm in the Blue Devils final non-conference regular season game.

Duke basketball fans were in shock, as was much of the nation. After taking their largest lead of the game, 10, with 2:48 to go in the 1st half. The Red Storm outscored the Blue Devils 54-40 for the rest of the game.

Leading the charge for the Red Storm was their star sophomore Shamorie Ponds, who exploded for 33 points. Ponds was the one player for St. John’s that Duke had to control, and to say they couldn’t control him would be an understatement.

Ponds was 12-23 from the floor, 4-8 from beyond the arc, and really got what he wanted all day long against the soft Duke defense.

The Blue Devils were able to limit the play of the Red Storm’s next best two players in Marvin Clark II and Justin Simon, who had 4 and 5 points, respectively. The Blue Devils were able to get Clark II into foul trouble as he only logged 21 minutes, but were not able to take advantage due to the foul trouble of star freshman, Marvin Bagley III.

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Duke was, once again, led by Gary Trent Jr. who had 22 points, on an excellent 7-12 shooting and 5-7 from three-point range.

Despite the great efforts of Trent, senior captain Grayson Allen struggled again, only putting up 7 points, 4 of them coming from the free throw line. The only field goal Allen made was the three pointer to cut the St. John’s lead back down to 1 with 36 seconds left.

Allen needs to regain his sophomore year form and become much more efficient from the floor if the Blue Devils want to achieve the goals they set out for at the beginning of the season.

Coach K’s squad seemed uninspired on the defensive glass in the 2nd half, allowing St. John’s to get second and even third chances on multiple possessions, not to mention the atrocious defense they played.

Duke played like a team that could sleep-walk through a 10-13 St. John’s team and focus their attention on their date with the Tar Heels.

The Red Storm gave the Dukies a major wake-up call, and maybe it was just what they needed, a notice to take all opponents seriously.

With that being said, the Blue Devils will head down Tobacco Road to take on their bitter rivals North Carolina on Thursday night.