Duke basketball keeps winning, but are the Blue Devils’ struggles on offense concerning?
Ranked No. 2, Duke played like the best team in the nation for nearly four weeks, combining hot shooting with lock-down defense.
The Blue Devils are still winning, but the offense has hit a speed bump, with an emotional rivalry game up next on Saturday night against North Carolina.
Monday, for the second game in a row, Duke couldn’t manage to hit 40% of its shots and still found a way to win. N.C. State pushed the Blue Devils like they haven’t been pushed in nearly two months, but Duke won, 74-64, for its 14th consecutive win.
The past two games, including Saturday’s 63-56 win at Wake Forest, saw Duke (18-2, 10-0 ACC) regress offensively. Over the previous seven games, beginning with an 82-56 win at Georgia Tech on Dec. 21, the Blue Devils had hit 50% or better in every outing.
Duke shot a season-low 36.8% to win at Wake Forest on Saturday and followed that up by making just 39% of its shots against the Wolfpack.
Over those two games, Duke turned the ball over 26 times and collected 24 assists. In the previous 18 games, the Blue Devils had never had a game where it didn’t have more assists than turnovers.
“Not many teams have taken away options like that or taken away passing lanes,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “And so for us, we have to work out to help them better with understanding what’s next. You know, we call it neutral, but we have to be better in playing unscripted.”
Wake Forest and N.C. State are the ACC’s top two teams in recording steals this season. So that disruption was somewhat expected. Both teams guarded Duke’s players closely further out from the basket and prevented the Blue Devils from finding flow on offense.
Duke freshman superstar Cooper Flagg committed seven turnovers against Wake Forest. Fellow freshman forward Kon Knueppel had five turnovers.
“They try to get after people, and we know that, and we’ve got to be tighter with the ball,” Knueppel said. “Me and Coop, we were really bad last game, taking care of the ball. We knew coming in that they were gonna make stuff hard.”
Both had just one turnover against N.C. State on a night Duke had 10 turnovers with 10 assists.
Six of Duke’s turnovers against the Wolfpack came in the game’s first 14 minutes, when the Blue Devils hit just 7 of 25 shots (28%) while falling behind by as many as 12 points.
With 4:50 to play in the first half, N.C. State led 35-22 as Duke had made just 8 of 30 shots (26.6%), including 3 of 15 3-pointers.
It took another super-human performance from Flagg, who scored 23 of his 28 points in the second half, to rally the Blue Devils past N.C. State.
Duke shot 45% in the second half, when Flagg made 6 of his 10 shots. He is who Duke grad student forward Sion James pointed to as the biggest difference for his team.
“Cooper Flagg for one,” James said. “That’s always a good one. But we were just getting to the paint. We were getting downhill a lot more. We’re just being more aggressive and taking the shots we got.”
These last two games as Duke’s offense took a step back, Flagg has been enough to get them their wins. He scored 24 against Wake Forest before his 28 against the Wolfpack.
The national player of the year candidate has topped the 20-point mark in his past three games and in six of his past eight games.
“Cooper manufactures a lot of stuff for us,” Scheyer said, “but we have to help just our team in general, move together when the main thing is taken away.”
Duke’s always had one or two other players contribute to its offense. Knueppel had 19 against the Wolfpack and 15 at Wake Forest. Before that, it was Tyrese Proctor scoring 20 along with Flagg’s 28 when Duke beat Boston College, 88-63.
The last two games, though, exposed something about Duke’s offense that it appeared had been fixed prior to that. The Blue Devils’ 3-point shooting has cratered as they were 9 of 32 (28.1%) at Wake Forest and 4 of 20 (20%) against N.C. State.
They entered the N.C. State game having made 37% of their 3-point shots for the season.
Duke is having a far better season than the rival Tar Heels (13-8, 6-3 ACC). But the way the Blue Devils have played offense of late means their winning streak, the nation’s longest active one, is in jeopardy when UNC comes to Cameron Indoor on Saturday night.
“We have to just be better,” Scheyer said. “There’s a few plays where we actually turned the ball over when we had to finish. You just have to be stronger and play through contact in the paint. But I have to help them better, which I will this week.”
This story was originally published January 28, 2025 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Duke basketball keeps winning, but are the Blue Devils’ struggles on offense concerning?."