On a night that ended on a Matt Jones half-court heave—the Blue Devils’ 37th attempt from beyond the arc—the first five minutes of the game proved to be a microcosm of what was to come.
The high-powered Duke offense failed to score in the first 5:19 of Monday's 64-62 loss to Syracuse, missing its first eight shots, including its first six from downtown. To say the Blue Devils struggled to solve Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim’s 2-3 zone defense is an understatement, as the team connected on only 10 of a season-high 37 threes—the fifth-most attempts in program history.
“We attacked it the right way probably half the game,” sophomore guard Grayson Allen said. “What the zone does a good job of is making you stand up and not attack it, just swing passes around. For us, when we were attacking the zone, we were making kicks, making the right play.”
Unlike a year ago—when Duke took advantage of Jahlil Okafor down low and Justise Winslow on the low block against the Orange’s zone and took only 38 combined 3-pointers in two games—the Blue Devils were not able to get effective contributions from the elbow in the middle of the zone Monday.
Despite the absence of senior forward Amile Jefferson and its impact on the the Blue Devils' depth and defensive rebounding woes, Duke's style of play did the home team no favors Monday. Against longer teams with athletic defenders, the Blue Devils have not consistently had a slasher to get easy baskets at the hoop. With Duke's offense lacking a threat to score at the rim—save some Marshall Plumlee put-back dunks—Boeheim and his defense continued to tighten, pushing farther and farther up on the Blue Devil offense and forcing the team to settle and hoist from deep.
Sometimes the offense works—Duke hit seven 3-pointers in the first 7:03 against Virginia Tech and six triples in less than nine minutes to build a 12-point first-half lead against Clemson.
But other times, the Blue Devils are left stuck, stewing in frustration as one shot after another clanks off the rim, leading to the 3:47 scoring drought that allowed Orange to jump back into the game in the first half and the 3:42 scoreless stretch that eliminated a six-point Duke lead early in the second half.
“You’re doing something human,” Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “No matter how well you do it, there are days where you don’t humanly do it as well as others. They played really good defense, and we had a number of open shots we didn’t hit.”
With 3:22 remaining, point guard Derryck Thornton hit a 3-pointer to cut the Syracuse lead to 61-56. After forcing forward Tyler Roberson into a miss and securing the defensive rebound, the Blue Devils had several looks to cut further into the lead—all from downtown.
Despite continuing to volley the ball back and forth and collecting three offensive rebounds on the possession, the Blue Devils struggled to move the ball inside the arc, hoisting three triples that all were off target before a tip-in by Brandon Ingram.
“We have a lot of shooters on our team and they’re great,” Thornton said. “Grayson, Luke, Matt, Brandon—all our perimeter [players] can really shoot the ball. That zone definitely forces you to shoot more threes and usually we make them, but today they didn’t fall.”
On a night where the defense held Syracuse to just 35 percent shooting despite a disastrous performance on the boards, the perimeter-focused Blue Devil offense—which entered Monday averaging 86.9 points per game—simply struggled to shoot over the top of the zone.
“Duke is a very good offensive team and to hold them to the numbers we did tonight was just a tremendous defensive effort by our kids,” Boeheim said. “Our 3-point defense was tremendous. The last three or four possessions we ran at four or five guys and got them off the 3-point line.”
The Blue Devils will likely be without the services of Jefferson for much of conference play and the young team will have to quickly move past Monday's 27.0 percent clip from beyond the arc. Three of Duke’s next four opponents rank in the top five in the conference in 3-point defense, with others likely to transition to more zone defenses against the Blue Devils.
As the common refrain goes—“Live by the three, die by the three.”
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