The 2019-20 Duke basketball season opened in a big way with a big win, but the top four takeaways here include one legit concern.
It wasn’t pretty at times but the Duke basketball team was able to get key buckets from multiple players to pull out a 68-66 victory over Kansas on Tuesday night. Starting with what looked to be the squad’s specialty, the following are four observations that stood out the most.
First takeaway: This Duke defense is legit
This win can be attributed to the defense. Duke was able to hold Kansas to just 0.84 points per possession while forcing 28 turnovers. The Jayhawks turned the ball over on 35 percent of their possessions.
With the offense struggling and Kansas extending the lead to nine about six minutes into the second half, the defense is what kept Duke in the game.
One of the keys was how the Blue Devils defended in the post.
Duke's post doubles were extremely effective last night. They big-to-big doubled on the flight of the pass the entire game.
— Jordan Sperber (@hoopvision68) November 6, 2019
Kansas scored 0 back-to-the basket post points and just 4 points directly off passes out of the double team: pic.twitter.com/p042poxmJL
When the Kansas bigs got the ball, Duke sent a double team almost every single time and this forced Udoka Azubuike and David McCormack to dribble out of it and make a pass and this was something they clearly weren’t comfortable doing and it led to them committing a combined seven turnovers.
And when Azubuike and McCormack didn’t turn it over, Kansas was often forced to restart the offense. On several of these occasions, the Jayhawks had to hurry their offense just to beat the shot clock, further pointing to Duke’s impact on the game through its strong defense.
Now let’s move on to the second of these top four takeaways, which concerns what did not at all look like a Duke basketball strength on Tuesday night against the Jayhawks and may prove to be a weakness throughout the entire season…