If anyone doubted that this year's men's basketball team would be a completely different one than last year's, the first two games of the regular season have put the doubt to rest.
People knew that this year's Duke squad would be different without point guard Bobby Hurley running the offense. Duke is still working several new players, including some freshmen, into the regular lineup, and these players are learning how to work with each other. It will take time to get used to life without Hurley.
With that said, there is no doubt that Duke's first two wins, including Wednesday night's 78-63 win over a heavily outmanned squad from The Citadel, were disappointing Blue Devil performances.
After last Saturday's 86-72 win over Northeastern, Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski laid into his team for its effort and concentration, or lack thereof. After Wednesday's game, Krzyzewski was less critical of his team's effort, but he still was concerned with its play.
"We need to get better," he said. "I think our kids are trying, but we're not playing at the level we need to play at."
There did seem to be more intensity in the Blue Devils effort against The Citadel. Players dove to the ground and hustled after loose balls, but there is no way around one fact -- the Blue Devils did not execute well for the second game in a row.
"[Against The Citadel] we wanted to play well," senior co-captain Grant Hill said. "We wanted to turn around what happened last Saturday. We didn't turn it around like we wanted to.
"One thing about college basketball is that players leave and players come in. It's just a matter of finding the right personalities and blending them together. It's not there yet, and we have to get on the ball and get it there."
Maybe Duke fans have become spoiled after years of seeing Duke badly dismantle inferior opponents in Cameron Indoor Stadium. Still -- and not to take anything away from The Citadel, which played a solid game --this Duke team has the talent to blow out teams of this caliber. In many cases, a win is a win, but not in Wednesday's game -- after the Northeastern game, everyone, including the players, expected a better outing.
"It was really disappointing," junior Cherokee Parks said. "The last couple of practices we had were really good. Everything we worked on we didn't do tonight."
In the young season, Duke has not shown the same killer instinct it has had in the past few years. It may yet develop. But according to Krzyzewski, this team may never be able to win in the same consistently overwhelming fashion to which people have become accustomed.
"There may not be those runs that we've had in the past with having four perimeter guys on the court causing a lot of turnovers and Hurley doing his stuff," Krzyzewski said. "That may not be the way you make a run, if we make runs. Hopefully we'll make a few this season."
The statistics were somewhat embarrassing for the Blue Devils versus The Citadel, which is expected to finish in the bottom-half of the less-than-powerful Southern Conference. Duke narrowly won the rebounding margin against its undersized opponent, and perhaps the most unbelievable stat of all is that Duke managed eight assists as a team. Freshman Greg Newton led the Blue Devils with three assists in his 10 minutes of action.
Without Hurley, the offense does not look fluid, and most of the passing has not been great. Also, Duke is not often looking to run -- it only had 10 fast-break points Wednesday -- and the Blue Devils are not finding the open people.
"I don't think we're making easy passes," Krzyzewski said. "Sometimes what happens with teams is that a kid thinks his pass has to be a scoring pass instead of just passing."
Things need to start coming together soon for Duke to be successful in upcoming games against tougher opponents such as Xavier and Michigan.
"We're all very good players, we all have talent, and we're all trying very hard," Hill said. "But maybe the right approach is not there."
Saturday, against Xavier, we will quickly find out what the Blue Devils can do at this early point in the season. Can they do the little things -- such as boxing out or moving the ball around on offense -- against the better teams that they have not done against the lesser squads?
"I hope the attitude on our team is that we should be a little bit scared [about the Xavier game]," senior Marty Clark said. "We've played okay, we've played maybe a B' orC' performance, but we're going to have to have an `A' performance against Xavier if we're going to win."
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