Duke basketball’s immediate reactions to Friday’s win over Arizona

The idea of ​​fading an overwhelming favorite will always exist, and Kon Knueppel made opposing recordings look smart after winning ACC Rookie of the Week in the opening week, but surprise! The best player on the team is also the best offensive force. Flagg finished with 24 points on Friday, making 10 of his 22 shots and converting two of his five 3-point looks.

Between the Kentucky and Arizona games, Flagg averaged 25.0 points. No other player on the roster averaged more than 13.5, and Flagg’s 41 attempts are 10 more than anyone else on the team. In big moments, head coach Jon Scheyer will have his superstar with the ball, and that will win over the entire season.

Arizona entered Friday’s game with a staggering 154-81 advantage on the glass through three games, but who better to counter that strength of a team than the Blue Devils? Scheyer never played anyone shorter than 6-foot-5, and Duke’s size advantage resulted in a 43-30 victory on the boards.

Flagg, Khaman Maluach and Maliq Brown pulled down 16 between them, but Duke’s size in the backcourt deserves more attention. Knueppel finished with seven rebounds, Tulane transfer Sion James had six and returning starters Caleb Foster and Tyrese Proctor both finished with four. It’s a testament to their physicality and effort compared to other guards, and it will turn losses into wins later this year.

Duke scored 35 points in the second half thanks to 16 from Flagg, 11 from Knueppel and eight from Foster. I’ll spare you the mental math, that’s literally all 35 of the team’s points.

The fact that Flagg was the only player to make a basket in the final 10 minutes against Kentucky was the biggest contributor to that loss, and those questions weren’t answered Friday. It seems crazy to say considering Scheyer spent the entire offseason saying he wouldn’t be able to play everyone he wanted, but there aren’t enough reliable options in high-pressure situations. The remaining names are mostly rookies, so maybe that will change in January or February, but it’s an ominous trend.

The Blue Devils led Kentucky by nine points at halftime last week, and Duke built a seven-point advantage at the midway point Friday. The biggest difference in Tucson? The Blue Devils never let big plays turn into runs. The Wildcats make several efforts to turn the emotional tide early in the second half, especially when Love and Carter Bryant made back-to-back threes to pull within seven with 10 minutes remaining. Flagg answered both shots with buckets of his own to keep Arizona at arm’s length, and he made his own 3-pointer two minutes later to go ahead by eight.

It’s the little moments that are taken for granted in comfortable wins, but snowballed into destruction in comeback losses. They deserve mention.

Knueppel averaged 15.0 points per game. game against Maine, Army and Wofford, but he finished 5/20 from the field against Kentucky with one 3-pointer in eight attempts. Through the first half against Arizona, he had just two points while making one of four shots. Suddenly, just two weeks after he looked like the best scorer on the team, questions began to arise about Knueppel’s offensive reliability.

Well, Knueppel must have held some angry social media posts in the draft over the last 20 minutes. He scored 11 points thanks to a trio of 3-pointers down the stretch, including a long triple with 3:56 on the clock to make it a 12-point game. In a matter of minutes, he went from a novice who needed to be re-evaluated to all systems normal, and that is a very positive development.