Last Friday, I wrote the following: "This Duke team is in trouble.... If I'm not eating these words on Sunday, it's going to be a long season."
Thanks to a few packets of ketchup and the barbeque sauce at Tommy's (along with a side of the best potato salad on campus), my own words actually went down pretty easily.
I still stand by some of what I said. The Duke team that played in Coral Gables seemed like a different group than the one that lost to Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech. The Blue Devils that lost those games were actually in trouble. Coach K said it himself after the loss to the Hokies: "We're not that Duke."
The fact that they beat Miami-and that they looked that day as if they were on their way to becoming "that Duke" again-is a credit to Coach K.
When he said "that Duke," Krzyzewski was likely referring to last year's team, which actually played a very similar style to the one employed by this year's model up until the Miami game. Last year, that scheme made sense (even though it may have come back to bite the Blue Devils against LSU). J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams were two of the best half-court scorers in the nation, able to beat their defenders almost at will. This year, that type of approach seems suicidal. No Blue Devil is even close to the caliber of half-court player that Redick or Williams was.
But even last year's team wasn't "that Duke"-at least not the way I remember. "That Duke" is the best Duke teams, the ones that opponents (and opponents' fans) truly feared.
"That Duke" pushed the ball upcourt, scored in transition and played stifling defense. "That Duke" seemed to get an awful lot of easy baskets. "That Duke" broke opponents' backs with monster runs, especially at the beginning of the second half and the end of the first. In 2001, "that Duke" averaged nearly 80 possessions per game, a pace that would have been the fastest in almost any recent year.
After the Georgia Tech game, this season's Blue Devils were one of the slowest-paced teams in the ACC. They were averaging 65.7 possessions per game-only Virginia Tech was slower.
For at least two years (up until the Miami game), it had seemed like the Blue Devils were forced to grind out every bucket they made. They weren't running and getting easy baskets after turnovers, instead they were walking upcourt and running their offense.
The Miami game showed that the only way this year's Duke team will win consistently is to play at a faster tempo to create easy baskets in transition.
Anyone who watched the Miami game saw the Blue Devils come out with a renewed devotion to pushing the tempo. Through the first 10:09, they had 19 possessions-they were on pace for a 76-possession game. (For perspective, no ACC team has played at that kind of pace this season, not even North Carolina.)
They turned steals into high percentage looks at the basket (dunks and layups, mostly) and pushed the ball upcourt even after made baskets. The effect of Duke's increased pace was more open looks at the basket than they had all season-and the Blue Devil players knocked down more than 80 percent of those shots in the first half.
Duke's pace slowed down over the last 10 minutes of the first period, and Miami cut the deficit to nine at the half. The Blue Devils still led by nine with 17:57 to play, but a 17-3 run absolutely crushed the Hurricanes. "That Duke" was back.
During that run, the Blue Devils had 11 possessions in just over six minutes, which works out to 73.3 possessions over 40 minutes, which, again, would be among the fastest paces in the ACC and the country.
Though the game's final numbers don't show it (thanks largely to the fact that Duke stalled for the last 10 minutes), the Blue Devils beat Miami at least partly because of their commitment to playing at a faster pace. Even in its half-court offense, Duke attacked the basket, rather than working the ball around the perimeter.
North Carolina coach Dean Smith is often credited with making the point that a faster tempo favors the more talented team. His successor at Carolina, Roy Williams, drove that point home in 2005 by winning a National Championship with a talented but flawed team that played at a very fast pace-winning the title game, incidentally, over a walk-it-up-and-bang-it-out Illinois team that very nearly went undefeated.
This year, the Blue Devils are also talented but flawed. A faster pace-like we saw in spurts against Miami-is going to give Duke the best chance to win game in and game out.
So I'll amend what I said on Friday.
If the changes we saw against Miami take root, it could be a special season.
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