It’s hard to imagine having a better freshman come through your program than Cooper Flagg. You could argue that Duke has done it the very next year.
Cameron Boozer is near-perfect every game. In Saturday’s win over Wake Forest, he went for 32 points on 11-20 shooting with nine rebounds, four assists, and three steals. It was his fourth 30-point outing of the year and second straight. It’s hard to expect a freshman to play that well every night, but Duke will need Boozer to deliver another stellar outing on Monday night with Louisville in town.
With Mikel Brown back, Louisville will be a much tougher test
On January 6, when Duke traveled to Louisville, Boozer submitted one of his best performances of the year. The star freshman went 10-12 from the field and 3-4 from three for 27 points. He added eight rebounds and four assists for good measure. Boozer did have four turnovers, but his 95.8 effective field goal percentage was his best of the year.
It took that effort, along with 23 points and four three-pointers from Isaiah Evans, for a 84-73 Duke road win. However, that win came without Louisville’s star freshman point guard, Mikel Brown Jr., on the floor. He missed time with an injury, but returned to action over the weekend, leading the way with 20 points and six assists in an 85-71 win over Virginia Tech.
Brown makes Louisville a much more formidable force on Monday night and in the race for the ACC Title. That’s part of why Boozer needs to be excellent to squash any hopes the 14-5 (4-3) Cardinals have of forcing their way into the upper echelon of the conference with an upset win at Cameron Indoor on Monday night. The other reason is just simple math.
Three is more than two, and Pat Kelsey knows it
It took far too long for this to happen, but the fact that three is more than two finally revolutionized basketball this century, and Louisville head coach Pat Kelsey leans into that analytically charged play-style. His team’s 3-point attempt rate is 100th percentile in college basketball. 53.9 percent of their shots are from beyond the arc.
That’s how, despite a 46.9 field goal percentage, to Duke’s 49.8 percent, Louisville nearly matches Duke in KenPom adjusted offensive efficiency and offensive rating.
Duke offsets the discrepancy between three-point attempts with insane efficiency, aided by a much higher-rate of free-throw attempts (a function of play-style, not a favorable whistle). In the last meeting, Duke went 19-28 from the line while Louisville made nine of its 12 free throw attempts. That’s a significant margin in an 11-point win.
Many of those trips to the line are generated by Boozer’s inside-out play style and precise passing. As an oversized offensive hub, he’s constantly creating easy shots or just hitting the tough ones himself.
Neither team is playing with much pace; both rank in the first percentile of percentage of points scored on the fast break across their last five games. So, Kelsey and Jon Scheyer will be content to trade baskets in the half-court. Kelsey will plan to drown Duke with a barrage of triples. Boozer must serve as a buoy of offensive efficiency to keep the Blue Devils' head above water on a night when his team could find itself trading twos for Louisville’s threes.