NEW YORK - Don't jump on the anti-Duke bandwagon just yet.
Despite its lackluster performance in Friday's 85-69 loss to Indiana, the men's basketball team is still a work in progress. The Blue Devils showed a few significant weaknesses, particularly foul shooting, physical play, outside shooting and defense.
However, the season is still young. The Blue Devils have been impressive in three of their first four games, and showed flashes of brilliance against Indiana, too. They are not letting their heads hang after one loss.
"The mood here is not well," junior forward Ricky Price said. "This team is a strong team. We're going to bounce back."
One must only look back to Duke's last trip to the Preseason NIT in 1990 to see the growth potential of this year's squad. In that year, a young Duke team lost in the tournament semifinals to Arkansas 98-88. Four months later, the Blue Devils were holding the national championship trophy.
In order to earn a repeat of 1990-91, or something close, the Blue Devils must work on these key areas. The first area Duke can improve on is foul shooting. A trademark of Duke basketball has always been its foul shooting. Throughout the championship years, the statistic was always tossed out that Duke made more free throws than its opponents attempted. However, this has not been the case this year, particularly on Friday night, when Duke shot an anemic 53.8 percent from the charity stripe.
"We started missing our free throws," junior forward Roshown McLeod said. "We had a lot of opportunities to keep the game close to have a better opportunity to win, but we didn't convert on some free throws.... They had the momentum and I think that's when it just started slipping away."
Tied in with the poor foul shooting is Duke's lack of success from outside. Duke only hit 24 percent of its shots from three-point range against Indiana. The Blue Devils were not able to get as many open looks as they were in earlier games, forcing them to take lower percentage shots.
A key to improving shooting is getting shots with the defense off-guard. Throughout both Wednesday and Friday's games, the Blue Devils were unable to get their transition game going, often because the opponent was winning the battle on the offensive glass. By getting out on the break, Duke can take higher percentage shots, as well as improving its confidence for more contested shots.
In order to improve its transition play, Duke will have to become more aggressive on the boards. The Blue Devils were banged around inside all weekend. They were unable to cope with Indiana's size and aggressiveness throughout the game.
"They played really physical and they just physically beat us up," junior guard Steve Wojciechowski said.
Indiana's physical play should serve as a wake-up call for Duke. Although they are a finesse team, the Blue Devils now know what it takes to compete with nationally ranked, physically strong teams. Duke doesn't look to be a team that will ever dominate an opponent with its strength, but it should be able to hold its own with most teams.
The last area the Blue Devils must build on is defense. Duke put forth a spectacular defensive effort against Tulsa, but was unable to sustain this performance against Indiana, giving up 39 points to Hoosier forward Andrae Patterson. The Blue Devils showed in their first three games their potential to dominate defensively. They recognize what went wrong against Indiana, and will work to improve on it tonight against Lehigh and in their ensuing games.
"We can't allow one guy to beat us night in and night out," McLeod said. "That's not going to make us a good team. We need to have guys go in and make sure we stop every individual, and collectively, we have to do it together as a team."
With these points in mind, the Blue Devils will now look to build on Friday's debacle and bring their level of play back to where it was in their first three games.
"I think it's a learning experience," McLeod said. "It feels really bad right now for us to lose. We don't want to have that feeling again.... We're going to do what it takes to try to go out and win every game from now on."
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