After losing Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler to graduation and Kyrie Irving to the NBA Draft, Duke enters the season without an obvious go-to player.
After all, the Blue Devils do not return a single player who averaged double-digit points last season, but for one night, at least, junior guard Seth Curry looked more than comfortable as Duke’s most featured option. Curry scored 18 points, grabbed six rebounds and handed out five assists as the Blue Devils beat defending Division II national champion Bellarmine 87-62, in their first exhibition game of the year Saturday at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
After having added Curry as the team’s third captain earlier this week, head coach Mike Krzyzewski hardly seemed surprised by the junior guard’s strong effort. And although he quipped about Curry’s quiet, laid-back demeanor on the court, it is clear that Krzyzewski understands how crucial it will be for Curry to grow into a more prominent leadership role on an inexperienced team.
“This is a young team,” Krzyzewski said. “We have a lot to learn about this team. We haven’t been this young in a long time.”
For most of the first half, the Blue Devils’ relative youth and inexperience showed. After jumping out to a 22-7 lead, Duke struggled to run effective halfcourt sets, both forcing shots and turning the ball over early in the shot clock. Ill-advised passes and excessive dribbling led to 12 first-half turnovers. Freshman Austin Rivers showed flashes of his incredible potential, with a 5-for-10 performance and 13 points but also fell victim to bouts of sloppy play. After junior forward and co-captain Ryan Kelly coughed up the ball with 2:30 to play, Bellarmine guard Keisten Jones raced down the court and scored in transition, cutting the Blue Devils lead to 32-31. But Duke collected itself nicely after a timeout, led 38-33 at half time and never looked back.
“The second half was excellent—we scored 50 points.” Krzyzewski said. “In the first half, we had 12 turnovers, and then we had three or four bad shots. So there were 16 possessions where we got nothing.”
After substituting rapidly in the first half, using 11 players, Krzyzewski tightened up his second-half rotation, allowing his team to develop a semblance of rhythm that it had lacked for much of the first period. With a steadier lineup around him, Curry appeared more than comfortable in a role as the Blue Devils’ primary ball-handler, settling down the pace of Duke’s halfcourt offense. He even flashed his ability to make big-time plays, completing a four-point play on a deep, contested three-pointer with 7:53 remaining in the second half.
Oddly, though, it was just one of two three-pointers the Blue Devils connected on all evening. Duke struggled from behind the arc, going 2-for-14 as a team. For a team that has frequently relied on long-distance shooting to be effective on offense, it was a positive sign that offensive success came despite an inconsistent 3-point performance.
“I had open looks,” Curry, who went 1-for-6 from beyond the arc, said. “I just wasn’t knocking them down. It’s like that some times, but I’m just going to keep shooting. [As a team] a few shots were forced, but other than that, we ran the offense well, we set it up and got the shots we wanted.”
Duke’s frontcourt played a major role in overcoming these shooting woes. Mason Plumlee scored 16 points and grabbed nine rebounds, and Miles Plumlee added 14 points and pulled down eight boards of his own. The two brothers connected on Duke’s first possession of the second half, with Miles lobbing an alley-oop that Mason slammed in with two hands. On the Blue Devils’ next possession, Mason followed up an Austin Rivers miss, grabbing the offensive rebound and finishing with a dunk. The sequence energized the Duke crowd, setting the tone for the Blue Devils’ strong second half.
Still, Bellarmine proved to be a formidable opponent. This is the third consecutive season in which Duke has played the Division II national champion in one of its exhibition contests, and unlike Cal Poly Pomona in 2010 and Findlay in 2009, Bellarmine returned almost its entire roster from last season and enters the year ranked No. 1 in Division II. This solid squad managed to keep the game within single digits for the first nine minutes of the half, but behind Curry’s steady hand, the Blue Devils pulled away.
“Seth’s played the best of all of our guys,” Krzyzewski said. “He’s well-respected and well-liked, and I would hope that the leadership title would help him even talk more [on the court].”
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