EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Saturday’s matchup between Duke and Butler was expected to play out much differently than April’s national championship game.
Only half of the starters from that contest took the floor at the Izod Center, and while the new-look Blue Devils had dominated in the young season, the Bulldogs had struggled to regain their championship form.
Despite the changes on both sides, though, much of Saturday’s game felt surprisingly similar to the two teams’ last meeting. Duke looked flat in the opening period and Butler was able to control the flow of the game by slowing the pace, leading 44-42 with 15 minutes to play.
The nation’s top-ranked team wouldn’t accept a loss, however, and the Blue Devils took control of the game late by picking up their energy and speeding up the tempo, reeling off a 12-0 run to take the lead for good with 13:04 left in the game.
“Brian Zoubek was here after the ballgame and he says, ‘Coach, those first 30 minutes were like the game last year,” head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “That’s how they want to play, that’s how they win—it’s a good way. We finally started moving the ball quicker and pressuring it better and it created some opportunities for us.”
Duke started its run by swinging the ball effectively around the perimeter and eventually getting it into the hands of Nolan Smith. The senior drew a foul on a 3-point attempt and nailed all three free throws to edge the Blue Devils ahead.
Smith was the catalyst of Duke’s attack for much of the afternoon, leading all scorers with 24 points. He picked his spots carefully against the defense and managed to drive into the lane almost at will despite the Bulldogs’ concerted effort to clog the paint. The guard’s aggressiveness earned him 14 foul shots.
Smith continued Duke’s run by getting fouled in the lane after his three free throws, finding teammate Kyle Singler on the reset for an easy post-up. He then raced down the court after a defensive stop and once again found Singler for the bucket.
The Blue Devils’ active defense led to another fast-break score from Andre Dawkins, and Duke finally had the comfortable advantage it had been searching for all night.
“They had a huge chip on their shoulder and they came out with that in the first half,” Smith said. “It took a halftime speech for us to come out in the second and finally get it going.... We finally started to pick it up, play our tempo and make them speed up. When we started doing that, we got some easy baskets and easy threes.”
The most important of those “easy threes” came from freshman Kyrie Irving. After being limited by Butler’s Ronald Nored and Shelvin Mack in the first half, Irving made better decisions in the second, moving the ball instead of forcing himself into the paint. The Blue Devils were better able to penetrate the Bulldog defense by making quick passes instead of attacking the set defense.
And when Butler head coach Brad Stevens forced Irving to shoot by placing the defensive emphasis on Duke’s perimeter threats, the freshman made him pay, sinking two huge threes to give the Blue Devils a 66-57 lead. Krzyzewski would call that sequence the turning point of the game.
“Kudos to him for stepping up and taking and making those shots late in the game,” Stevens said about Irving, who scored 17 of his 21 points in the second half.
Irving’s outburst propelled Duke to 40 points in the final 15 minutes, a scoring binge more representative of this current crop of Blue Devils than the poorly-executed first half.
Although the team’s halftime adjustments and collective speed showed how much Duke has changed since that April game against Butler, one thing still hasn’t: the end result.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.