You have to put it in perspective - and we will in just a minute - but Duke's 141-68 win over St. Augustine's was very, very impressive.
First the perspective: a team like St. Aug's is going to be at a serious disadvantage against a team like Duke. It's worse than that though: they also lost their coach in July and were totally outclassed on the court in talent, size, and cohesiveness, which you would expect when a new system is being installed an internalized.
Keep all that in mind when you remember that:
- Duke shot out to a 30-1 lead
- Duke forced 20 first-half turnovers
- Duke shot 65.7% from the floor for the game and 55.9% from behind the line.
- Duke had seven players score more than St. Aug's highest scorers (four at 11)
- Duke outrebounded St. Aug's, 47-34
- Duke racked up 38 assists on 46 baskets.
Even though Duke totally outclassed St. Augustine's, it was a highly impressive performance. What we saw in this game is a glimpse of something that you rarely see: a team that is equally capable of applying equally serious pressure on offense or defense.
Over the last few years, Duke has had several teams that while tremendous defensively had a lot of trouble scoring, and some that could score, but only deliberately. Those days are over.
This Duke team can hit people from just about anywhere. Take a still less than 100% Kyle Singler, who wound up with 31 points and nine boards. Andre Dawkins came off the bench for 20; Seth Curry hit 15 in his Cameron debut. Ryan Kelly was 5-6 and with his new body is a revelation. He's big, strong, confident and decisive.
Nolan Smith and Kyrie Irving hit for 15 and 17 respectively.
Tyler Thornton, billed as a defensive specialist, showed a nice outside touch, scoring nine points including a pair of threes.
About the only quibble was that Miles Plumlee only scored two points and two boards, but he did block four shots. And when you rack up 141 points, it's not that big a deal if one guy doesn't rack 'em up. People know what he's capable of.
It was a very impressive performance, particularly when you consider that it was in many respects a typical exhibition game, where the coaching staff is experimenting and new players are trying to integrate themselves into the rotation.
In other words, this team is a long way from where it could be, and it's already highly impressive.
Singler was brilliant. We didn't think he'd be so solid coming off surgery, but he was deadly. Shooting 10-14 and 6-9 from three point range - and with such complete panache - was remarkable. Can't beat having seniors.
As good as it is to have Singler and Smith, Kyrie Irving has already had an immediate and obvious impact on this team.
We've always said that the measure of success for Duke in replacing a player is that you don't miss him. And while we'll have to wait and see how Duke works on Scheyer's intangibles, it's already clear that Irving is a gem.
When people first started comparing him to Jason Williams, we weren't sure. But the comparisons to Chris Paul? That we can see.
He's not powerful in the way Jason was. Jason could make a mistake, sometimes an egregious one, and then come back and do something stunning to make up for it. His talent was so great that he could lose his concentration for a while and still slice you up.
Irving, by contrast, is quick though not as powerful (not many guards are). He's probably more cerebral than Jason was and less likely to make a significant mistake. That said, he may not be able to score 19 straight or whatever it was against UCLA as Williams did, not that it matters.
He's going to be really good. In some ways, he reminds us of Scheyer more than Williams. Scheyer came to Duke with a fraction of Irving's talent but immense poise. Irving appears to have that as well. If that holds up, Duke is in for a fun ride.
Curry played well but will probably have a bit of an adjustment period. Won't be long, though. He's a mini microwave.
Down low, Duke got a nice game out of Mason Plumlee, who was 6-6 from the floor and ran the court beautifully. He also was the second-leading rebounder behind Singler with eight. It was pretty easy to do against St. Augustine's of course, so we'll wait and see how he does against another real big man. No question he has improved over last year, though.
As solid as everyone was, the guy who really stood out to us as perhaps the most improved was Kelly.
Last year, he was so thin he couldn't really assert himself. Not so anymore.
Kelly is up a good 20-25 pounds, and he's playing with a lot more confidence. He makes quick decisions and they're usually the right ones. He was 5-6, with six boards and two assists. He also grabbed four rebounds.
Our guess is he's going to be the biggest surprise of this year's team. He's just vastly better.
We didn't get to see as much of Josh Hairston as we might have liked, and on a couple of occasions, he got burned on defense. On the other hand, though, he ran the court a couple of times and reminded us of Lance Thomas. He did get 17 minutes, but we didn't really get as solid a sense of his game as we would have liked. That'll come in time.
This game sent a message: Duke is going to be an absolute load.
It's a long season, and you never know how things work out. Someone might not develop as expected, someone might get injured, and some team somewhere might catch fire and be radically better than expected and lay in wait for the Devils.
As of Saturday, though, it's hard to imagine that many teams are starting the season with as much promise as this one is.