Duke Basketball: Non-stop driving offers Blue Devils best chance to cruise

If the Duke basketball freshmen opt for drives over shots from deep as often as they did during the second half Saturday night against Virginia, they are likely to find themselves often cruising to lopsided victories.

The Duke basketball program’s current streak of 1,038 games with at least one made 3-pointer ranks third in the nation and dates back to 1989.

While the streak’s growth offers a fun sideshow, the streak’s sudden end — especially if it came as a result of zero attempts — would symbolize the 2019 Blue Devils’ overall growth and likely coincide with their season’s most impressive show.

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Duke, now 15-2 and No. 2 in the latest AP Top 25 Poll, provided what is hopefully a glimpse of the near future during the final 15 minutes of its 72-70 home win Saturday over now-No. 3 Virginia by only attempting one shot from beyond the arc (the one, a miss, only occurred in order to beat the shot clock).

The team’s three leading scorers for the season — freshmen R.J. Barrett (23.8 points per game), Zion Williamson (21.5), and Cam Reddish (13.0) — seemed to simultaneously embrace and take full advantage of their No. 1 specialty:

Driving.

Whoopee! Off to the races.

Barrett discovered his inner Dale Earnhardt. Reddish looked a bit like Richard Petty. Williamson, as usual, was behind the wheel of a monster truck.

The trio impressed millions of spectators — including loads of NBA scouts — with their determined moves to the basket and breathtaking array of finishes. They were relentless and dared anyone to get in their way. As a result, the team finished in Victory Lane.

Yes, they finally figured out that they’re at their best when sticking to their forte — what a revelation.

As Ball Durham has been relentless at pointing out all season, these freshmen-laden Blue Devils are atrocious from deep (a program-worst 31.2 percent for the season following a 2-for-14 bricklaying, almost entirely in the first half, against the Cavaliers); however, they are still on pace to average more 3-point attempts per game (24.9) than all but one squad in program history (’01 averaged 27.1).

ALSO READ: Blue Devils take foes’ bait by jacking up open 3-pointers

Up until the stretch following the under-16 timeout against Virginia, Duke’s love for the three seemed to blind its view of its potential.

That blinding love seemed to be the squad’s fundamental issue in its overtime loss at home to Syracuse on Jan. 14 (the Blue Devils finished 9-for-43 from 3-point land).

And that blinding love has likely kept its average margin of victory lower than it should be — the fact that this team, despite jacking up far too many shots from downtown, has an average margin of victory (22.1) that is on pace to be the second-highest mark in program history, trailing only the ’99 team (24.6), just speaks to the unprecedented level of assembled talent currently in Durham.

Now, fingers crossed that, for the rest of the way, the Blue Devils become Durham’s all-time greatest show on the hardwood by hardly ever settling for the long-distance shots that they hardly ever seem to make.

It’s time — and has been for quite some time — for them to drive on every single possession until an opponent proves able to consistently stop it; considering the Cavaliers’ esteemed pack-line defense couldn’t stop it with any regularity, the chance of another defense doing so seems slim.

• Drives by Duke lead to opponents racking up fouls in a hurry.
• They lead to emphatic finishes that extinguish opponents’ hopes.
• They reduce the risk of momentum-killing scoring droughts by producing at least one point on a much higher percentage of possessions than 3-point attempts.
• They provide less of a chance than 3-point attempts to lead to opponents’ transition opportunities.
• Even when driving attempts end in blocks by the opponents, the ball typically falls out of bounds with the Blue Devils retaining possession.

Also, as an added bonus, Blue Devil drives make it easy for the Duke basketball program’s official Twitter account to find five top plays from games. All five from the Virginia game, as shown below, include a spectacular conclusion in the paint:

What Barrett and Williamson showed in the above highlights has been on display all season; however, the frequency of such plays and the team’s overall shooting percentage have taken a giant hit by the excessive number of 3-point attempts to date. The Blue Devils’ 48.9-percent clip from the field ranks 23rd in the nation, but their 59.3-percent accuracy from within the arc ranks 5th.

Non-stop iso drives by the pair of lefties, along with a sprinkling of those from Reddish, appears to be the simple answer. The opponent shouldn’t matter. And nothing should change even when freshman point guard Tre Jones returns from his shoulder injury (according to a tweet Monday from The News & Observer’s Stephen Wiseman, coach Mike Krzyzewski said that Jones will not play in Duke’s next game “unless something miraculous happens.”)

So when the Blue Devils play at Pitt on Tuesday at 9 p.m. (on ESPN) — marking Coach K’s first matchup against his former player and assistant, Jeff Capel — if the program’s streak of consecutive games with at least one made 3-pointer does happen to come to an end, fans won’t likely notice.

No, they’ll be too busy replaying the display of dominance that stems from the aggressive driving of R.J. Earnhardt, Cam Petty, and the monster truck called Zion.