Duke Basketball: Flyin’ Zion Williamson, R.J. Barrett shake rims in debut win

The Duke basketball team defeated Ryerson, 86-67, on Wednesday in Toronto as two freshmen showed why they are every bit as good as advertised — if not better.

Essentially all of the highlights from the Duke basketball team’s debut win in its Canada Tour came from the two freshmen who were the main reasons so many Duke fans signed up for a free trial of ESPN+ this week.

And the obvious takeaway from the Blue Devils’ 86-67 win over Ryerson is that Flyin’ Zion Williamson and R.J. Barrett appear to be anything but overrated.

“This has very much been the Zion and R.J. show,” ESPN analyst and former Duke basketball player Jay Bilas said during the fourth quarter as Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski began making plans to get his star freshmen out of the game as the outcome had long since been decided.

Duke fans who were able to watch the game likely all came away with one common realization: Williamson and Barrett have a knack for making plays that are worthy of ending up on SportsCenter.

Also, some of Williamson’s most thunderous plays seemed to shake this writer’s TV while watching from home.

With a few minutes remaining in the first half, the Spartanburg, S.C., native’s putback dunk from Jordan Goldwire’s missed three-pointer forced jaws to drop in the Canadian crowd and actually left Bilas speechless for a moment — a rare occurrence.

And about two minutes before that play, Williamson decided to become the most recent human to travel to the moon just so that he could snatch a defensive rebound in the paint.

Williamson, who finished with 29 points and 13 boards, put Duke on his shoulders at times in the first half as the Blue Devils recovered from a 17-15 deficit at the end of the first quarter (FIBA rules were in effect). He hit three of his four attempts from beyond the arc before the break, helping to propel his team to a 40-28 lead as it went into the locker room for halftime.

At the half, Williamson and Barrett had combined for all but three of Duke’s points. Part of the reason for that was the fact that sophomore guard Alex O’Connell had to leave the game in the first quarter and not return after getting poked in the eye.

Although Barrett was the game’s leading scorer with 34 points and showed more than a few flashes of brilliance — even though he had to play away from his natural position by serving as the point guard for much of the game with fellow freshmen Tre Jones and Cam Reddish on the bench nursing injuries — it was Williamson who showed why he is a specimen that basketball fans may have never seen before.

“It’s hard to overstate how impressive this young man is,” Bilas said of the 6-foot-7, 285-pound freak of nature. “I think that everyone is realizing that Zion Williamson is everything that we have been saying, and he might be even more…We have not seen anyone like him in college basketball.”

But with 30 seconds left in the third quarter, Barrett had a breakaway dunk of his own that may have also registered on the Richter scale. The 6-foot-7, 205-pound Canadian southpaw displayed his ability to create plays from all areas of the court.

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Barrett also did his part to highlight his fellow freshman’s ability to finish. With about eight minutes remaining in the game, Barrett lofted an alley-oop pass to Williamson on a fast break that ended with another slam that caused a reverberation throughout the Paramount Fine Foods Centre and gave Duke fans a preview of what is likely to come when the official season begins against Kentucky in Indianapolis on Nov. 6.

When Barrett and Williamson weren’t flushing the ball through the basket with uncanny force, they were showing off their finesse and their wide range of talents. They both displayed an ability to make shots from outside while also avoiding getting blocked in the paint by making tricky scoop shots with either hand.

While it’s difficult to immediately find a box score for this pre-preseason matchup, the easiest way to summarize the stat sheet is this: Williamson and Barrett filled every section of it while the rest of the Blue Devils spent most of the night seemingly watching with as much amazement as the rest of the viewers.

The Blue Devils next face the University of Toronto on Friday at 6 p.m. EST. On Sunday, the Blue Devils will finish off their Canada Tour when they play McGill University in Montreal at 3 p.m. EST. Both games will also be televised on ESPN+.