The Blue Devils didn’t need injured point guard Kyrie Irving to earn a 35-point victory over Bradley Wednesday night, but they certainly did not possess the same comfort on offense without their freshman sensation, especially in the first half.
Duke will continue adapting to Irving’s absence Saturday in Cameron Indoor Stadium when the No. 1 Blue Devils take on St. Louis at 12 p.m.
Irving’s toe injury will keep him off the court indefinitely. Primary ball handling duties for the Blue Devils (9-0) now fall to senior Nolan Smith, who has not been called upon to fill that role since his sophomore season.
“Nolan having the ball as point guard [is] a little different from what we’ve been doing, but we’ve got some time before the conference season starts to figure things out,” associate head coach Chris Collins said.
Even though St. Louis (3-3) will most likely find itself overwhelmed even by a Duke team searching for offensive continuity, the Billikens have the ability to frustrate the Blue Devils’ multitude of outside shooters. St. Louis is holding opponents to a paltry 57.3 points per game. Moreover, the Billikens are limiting their opposition to 30.2 percent shooting from 3-point range.
The Blue Devils counter with long-range bombers Kyle Singler, Seth Curry and Andre Dawkins. Dawkins, who moved into the starting lineup Wednesday night, drained eight 3-pointers against Bradley en route to a career-high 28 points. While Dawkins won’t be expected to put up those numbers every game, the sophomore will need to continue to display consistency as his minutes increase.
“As a starter, we’re expecting him to continue to grow,” Collins said of Dawkins.
If St. Louis stymies Duke’s perimeter game, the Blue Devils may find success in the post, as freshman Rob Loe, a 6-foot-11 forward, is the Billikens’ only player taller than 6-foot-8. Junior Miles Plumlee will no doubt look to build off his 7-for-7 shooting night against Bradley, and his brother Mason has shown that he can dominate on both ends of the floor.
“We want to continue to build up our big guys to where they’re confident in their games and producing on a night-to-night basis,” Collins said.
St. Louis will try to counter these mismatches down low by minimizing Duke’s possessions with head coach Rick Majerus’s deliberate brand of basketball. Majerus, who boasts 482 career wins, guided the Billikens to the championship series of the College Basketball Invitational last March and has plenty of experience playing teams of the Blue Devils’ caliber.
“We try to play against teams we could play in the postseason,” Collins said of St. Louis. “We just felt it’d be a really good game for us early in the season to gauge where we’re at.”
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