Devils Chew Up Owls, Spit Out Feathers

Well, that was fun.  Duke, putting it all together tonight, or
mostly anyway, totally trashed Temple, erasing the idea that the teams are
roughly competitive, at least at this point, and putting another brick in the,
uh, Temple of Jason.

Williams was phenomenal last night. In the first half,
along with the rest of the team, he was lighting it up from three point range
and overall ended the game 10-12. As a team, Duke ended up shooting 17-30. Yeah,
we had to read that twice too.  Additionally, after struggling early with
the boards, Duke ended up outrebounding a much bigger Temple team, 32-31.

But
our favorite stat of the game is this one: Chris Duhon with 12 assists. That's
amazing for a freshman who doesn't start.  We're not sure what the current
Duke record is for most assists in one game. At one point it was 12, but we seem
to remember Hurley breaking that.

By the second half, Duke had so totally
broken Temple that they were moving the ball around on offense like it was a
demonstration and not a game. The matchup zone was just useless.  As Jay
Bilas said, and as we had said previously, this team moves the ball as well as
any group we can remember.  Well that's not exactly what he said, but he
did say that they have a better understanding that a pass can lead to a pass
which is an assist than most anyone else.

A slight oddity: despite playing
superb defense tonight, perhaps Duke's best defensive effort in a long time,
Temple only had 13 turnovers. However, in the first half, when Duke was building
a 20 point lead, Temple only shot 33.3% from the floor.

Another oddity:
perhaps because of Jason's explosion, Boozer only hit 8 points tonight. 
And Dunleavy, usually very sure-handed, had 5 turnovers.

In another bright
note, Duke got 46 minutes from Duhon, Sanders, and Horvath, which will help them
develop and let the starters catch some rest.  Not that they needed it too
much tonight.

The big incoming snowstorm here caught us by surprise and we are
unprepared for big weather and are scrambling, so we didn't get to watch as
closely as we'd like.  We'll post more after watching the tape more
carefully.

Notes - Omar Cook had 17 assists earlier this year, but we wonder
how many backup points (let alone freshmen)  have had 12 assists? 
Remarkable...in case you missed it, Bilas said that the Sixers at one point had
Chris Collins, Kobe Bryant, Mike Bibby and Mike Dunleavy Jr. in
strollers.....not a bad room of talent....two of the three have already
surpassed their fathers....