Duke basketball performance against Southern Indiana was ‘not acceptable’

Duke basketball head coach Jon Scheyer was not happy with team’s performance. 

A sleepwalking Duke basketball team showed up to Cameron Indoor Stadium on Friday night and the Blue Devils were lucky that Southern Indiana was its opponent or it could have suffered a bad loss and head coach Jon Scheyer knows it.

“Southern Indiana came out really ready to play, well prepared, and they played harder than we did in the beginning.” Scheyer said in his postgame comments to the media.

The Eagles led by four points, 35-31, at halftime before the Blue Devils rallied in the second half to outscore Southern Indiana by 22 points, winning 80-62.

“I think that is pretty clear. You don’t need me to tell you that,” Scheyer explained. “That is disappointing. That is not acceptable.”

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Jeremy Roach and Kyle Filipowski led the charge after halftime to combine and score 31 points on 11-of-15 shooting as the team shot 60.7-percent from the field over the final 20 minutes.

“It easily could have been 10 or more,” Scheyer continued about his team’s halftime deficit.

Duke basketball knows it has a lot of room to improve

Duke’s defense stiffened to hold AJ Smith, Southern Indiana’s leading scorer in the first half, scoreless in the second half and the Eagles to just 38.5-percent shooting from the floor and 2-of-7 from 3-point range.

“We have to know we have a lot of things we have to do better,” Scheyer added. “That has been my message to the team.”

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“We are not close to where we want to be. It’s good to win, but it is not just about winning; it is about playing to the best of your ability.”

Friday night marked the final game of the Blue Devil Challenge as Duke defeated Bucknell and La Salle in its previous two games as the program prepares for one of its biggest games of the season against Arkansas in Fayetteville on Wednesday night.