Duke dominates Arizona on the road, 69-55

Let’s start with what we didn’t like from Duke’s visit to Arizona.

There were too many turnovers. Arizona put a lot of defensive pressure on the Blue Devils and the young Blue Devils fell for it. Cooper Flagg had four and the team as a whole had 14.

Duke wasn’t great from the line either, hitting just 8-13. In a closer game, that would have been a serious issue and will no doubt be reviewed heavily before the game at Kansas.

Shooting wasn’t great either, with Duke hitting 10-26 from three-point range and 26-61 overall.

There are other small niggling concerns as well.

Overall though?

Wow! Great game by Duke.

The people in Tucson were waiting for this one and they were excited and the Blue Devils took that excitement away and made it a learning experience for the Wildcats because Duke did a number on Arizona on Friday night.

This is a team that averaged 99.3 in this game. Duke held Arizona to 44.3 below their scoring average. Tommy Lloyd is a great coach with three points. What got Arizona there? Just 6-23 (26.1 percent). And overall only 21-53 for 39.6 per cent.

Only freshman Jaden Bradley shot well, hitting 8-16. Longtime Duke nemesis and former Tar Heel Caleb Love shot just 3-13. He fired nine threes and hit just one of them. And while Duke had 14 turnovers, they forced 15 and scored on 19 of those turnovers.

In short, Duke looked to Arizona’s strengths and stifled their shooting, their offensive rebounding, their passing and ball handling, and their transition game.

And that was with three newbies, mind you.

One of them, of course, was Cooper Flagg, who had another wonderful all-around game. He led Duke in scoring with 24, including, we believe, a personal 10-point run in the second half.

He also put tremendous pressure on Arizona on both ends of the court. Flagg had a steal, but it seemed like more, and two blocks. It’s not an exact analogy, but it’s like Wayne Gretzky out there moving where the game needs to go. People focus on shooting where he has some work to do, but the rest of his game? Off the charts.

There was also much more. Khaman Maluach didn’t have great stats, but he changed or blocked a lot of shots and hit the first three of his career. Kon Knueppel started a little slowly, but in the end he hit two shaky threes. Tyrese Proctor and Caleb Foster had some ups and downs, but they had just three turnovers between them, scored 16 points, grabbed eight boards and had two steals.

Duke only got eight points off the bench, but Sion James had his best game yet and Maliq Brown’s contributions will be primarily defensive. He only had two points, but he also had seven boards, three assists, two steals and a block. He was really good.

This was a statement game for Duke. Winning by 14 on the road, much less at McKale, is not easy to do. Removing a team’s strengths like that isn’t easy to do either.

As we said at the beginning, it wasn’t a perfect game for the Devils. IF they had shot better..IF they had kept the pressure better…IF they had kept the ball better…IF Maluach had played better…Duke might have won by 25.

Of course, there are many ifs, but you start to get an idea of ​​how good this team can be. The future is really bright.

Notes – Caleb Love has had a lot of scrimmage against Duke over the years, but with multiple defenders throwing at him, he didn’t have many answers…we didn’t know Motiejus Krivas had an injury, but last year, Duke got Kyle Filipowksi to recover from his hip surgeries…just part of the game…Duke missed a big opportunity when Proctor missed both free throws on a technical…at times in this game the ball movement was just amazing…last end was Duke’s size and athleticism too much for the Wildcats to overcome…