Duke Beats Illini, And Impressively, Too
Duke put on a pretty impressive performance against Illinois in the Maui Classic, holding an 18 point lead at one point and generally having their way with the Illini, winning 79-66. One of the ESPN announcers (we think it was Bill Raftery) said “Duke is better than we expected.” Or words to that effect, anyway.
There are a couple of immediate points to note. First, Duke dominated Illinois despite being outrebounded, and badly. Second, Duke won handily despite a game from Kyle Singler that was below what he’s established as his standard. Third, Duke won despite foul trouble from Singler (who fouled out) and DeMarcus Nelson and Lance Thomas, who had four each for a good bit of the second half.
Illinois made it clear at the beginning that they were going to try to run with Duke, and they started off with a small lead. They were up 14-8, but Duke quickly cut that lead down to 14-13.
Duke was having trouble finding the groove and ironically enough, found it to an extent by going to zone, which confused Illinois, as the Illini missed three straight shots. Duke seized the momentum and never looked back.
A huge part of this was because of the play of DeMarcus Nelson, who took Illinois to the woodshed.
Gerald Henderson was superb also, forcing the Illini to deal with his athleticism as he shot from outside and drove, including one memorable dunk which should be on any highlight reel from the season. It was that good.
Before he got into foul trouble, Lance Thomas had some of the best minutes of his Duke career, doing a passable imitation of John Smith. Smith, the 6-7 forward who played a similar role to Thomas’s in 1987, had some excellent moments defensively, and his footwork and ball handling were hugely better than we’ve ever seen from him before. Add it to his overall quickness and his help in Duke’s pressure D, and you can call him a revelation.
Greg Paulus was also superb. He’s really beginning to show what he can do, where before, something always kept him from stepping up. But now he’s doing a bang-up job in the point guard role, distributing the ball, playing aggressive and intelligent defense, and looking to emerge as one of the nation’s top point guards.
Bench play was somewhat limited, but Duke got key minutes from Brian Zoubek, which is great. If he’s healthy enough to get minutes, he’ll really help out.
Nolan Smith got 10 minutes, but given how well Paulus played, it’s no big surprise. Taylor King only got a couple of minutes.
Although several guys played well, perhaps no one took as much satisfaction out of this game as Jon Scheyer, who took a lot of grief back home about his decision to come to Duke (if you didn’t know it, his high school coach was Bruce Weber’s brother). He had a very solid game and was lauded by the announcers for playing a “point forward.” Perhaps they forgot that he was the backup point guard last season, out of necessity.
If they want to call him something, perhaps they could call him a Swiss Army knife. The guy won’t overpower anyone, but he passes well, he defends well, he shoots well, and does whatever is asked of him. Someone asked Lincoln how long the ideal soldier’s legs should be and Lincoln said long enough to reach the ground. Jon Scheyer is a player, and a damn good one.
Singler had a quiet game, as we said, but this was his first game against really talented and really physical, motivated big men. It’s an adjustment. He had figured it out by the end, but we can understand how it might be something you need to get used to. Even so, he had some nifty plays: he showed a sweet spin move in the lane, although the shot was blocked, and later he caught a pass for a spectacular layup before falling out of bounds.
Illinois was in trouble by the end of the first half, but they made a superb rally to cut the lead back to eight points. But in the second half, after hitting their first two shots, they went 2-21.
Duke was outrebounded 37-27 and just crushed on the offensive boards, 19-4. Typically, they overcome that by forcing turnovers, but in this game, Duke had 10 turnovers and Illinois 11, so it wasn’t the turnover margin and the quick points. Rather, it was good defense and good shooting. Yes, Illinois got 19 more offensive rebounds, but they also had to take 19 more shots than Duke did. They shot 21-65 for 32.3%, to Duke’s 26-46 for 56.5%.
Duke won, ultimately, because they pitted their quickness against the size and power of Illinois. They’ll be doing that a lot this season, so it’s an encouraging result.