The Duke basketball team should be happy it got back in the win column on Tuesday night against Louisville but there is still a lot of things to work on.
There was finally continuity and leadership on the floor with the return of Jeremy Roach and Mark Mitchell, but it didn't last long after Roach had to leave early in the second half because of an ankle sprain.
Duke held an 18-point, 38-20, lead after Roach was injured with 5:25 left before halftime and it was trimmed all the way to three points, 49-46, with 14:33 left in the second half because of sloppy defense miscommunications all over the floor.
Louisville, an awful 3-point shooting team, shot 54-percent on its 2-point field goal attempts in its 83-69 loss to the Blue Devils and were the aggressors after halftime, going on a 17-4 run that bridged the first and the second halves.
There were very little adjustments made from Jon Scheyer on the defensive side of the ball and Louisville kept attacking the paint. Switching to a zone defense would have made sense for the Blue Devils to try and force Louisville to shoot from the outside.
It's the situation that most ACC teams get put in while playing the Cardinals, win unimpressively and be called out for sloppy play or win very impressively and get no credit because Louisville is one of the worst power conference teams in the country.
One benefit for Duke was that because it was playing the porous defense of Kenny Payne's squad, its offense looked brilliant when it was attacking and getting into the paint.
Tyrese Proctor toyed with the Louisville guards, finishing with a career-high 24 points, while Mitchell was 8-of-11 from the field with 20 points.
The Blue Devils were 15-of-18 on layups and dunks and made 52.6-percent of its shots inside the 3-point arc, just the amount of time it took for the team to realize the Cardinals could not stop them inside was troubling.
Kyle Filipowski, specifically, was too enamored with the 3-point shot despite only making 1-of-6 attempts and going 5-for-10 from 2-point territory with his 15 rebounds.
Duke will now hope that Jeremy Roach is able to play on Saturday afternoon (4:00 p.m. ET, ESPN) against Clemson as the team has seen a void of leadership when he's not on the court.