At the end of the day, the most important thing is that Duke exited the season-opener against Army with an 84-50 win and without any injuries.
But Monday night's performance was not what fans - or Jon Scheyer - expected out of a team that looked so dominant during its exhibition schedule. The Blue Devils looked discombobulated and out of sorts on offense for large stretches of the evening.
After hitting their first seven shots of the game, Duke finished the first half hitting just 5-of-20 and managed just 33 points against an Army team that ranked 338th in KenPom's preseason projections.
Army's zone defense confounded Duke, something Scheyer admitted after the game was his own fault for not having his team better prepared for it.
I take the blame on that," Scheyer said of Duke's struggles against Army's zone. "We don’t play zone, so we haven’t worked on it as much in practice. It’s something we did a brief thing in preparation for this game. But I’ll make sure; we’ve always been a really good zone team. We have shooting, bigs that can pass and playmake. We just need to get more organized.”
More than anything, though, Scheyer blamed Duke's relative struggles on Monday night on the team putting too much pressure on itself to be great. Wearing the Duke uniform comes with a responsibility and an expectation, and the Blue Devils didn't handle it well. But it's just game one. It's why you schedule a game like Army for the opener, because you can play your D+ game and still win going away.
Jon Scheyer believes Duke's struggles against Army were a great learning experience
“I thought our guys played a little bit like, when we didn’t extend the lead right away, it’s like we’re letting everybody down, or we’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing," Scheyer said. "What we’re supposed to do is play the right way every possession. That’s what I want to get our guys to understand. The score and the results are gonna take care of itself. I think that’s part of the beauty of wearing this jersey and it’s part of the burden. We need to get back to just being true to who we are.
"I thought we lost that character a little bit tonight, but I’m also glad it happened because I think we can learn from it, too. I just want our guys- we’re 1-0; we’ve got to go get a second win on Thursday, and you take it game by game, day by day. That’s what I want us to do.”
Scheyer got more teachable moments out of the Army game than he probably expected. That's a good thing. A lot of times in buy games against such overmatched opponents, there's little you can really take away.
But Army threw something out at Duke that exposed an early weakness. You can bet that the Blue Devils are going to see a lot more zone defenses from teams moving forward. But you can also bet that Duke is going to work out those early kinks and punish the next team that tries it.
Duke is back on the court on Thursday against Coastal Carolina. I would expect to see a Duke team that plays a lot looser than the tight one we saw on Monday night at Cameron.
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