Record: 35-5, 13-3 (1st place tie)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Won
Final AP Ranking: 3
All-ACC Players: Kyle Singler (1st), Jon Scheyer (1st), Nolan Smith (2nd)
All-Americans: Jon Scheyer (2nd)
I love the composition of this team. In Singler, Scheyer, and Smith, you had one of the great trios in ACC history holding down the two guard spots and the wing. Those three guys basically never came out of the game.
Then, in the frontcourt, you had tremendous size in Brian Zoubek, Lance Thomas, and the Plumlee brothers. Their jobs were to play defense, get rebounds, set screens, and occasionally get a garbage basket off an offensive rebound or a dish from one of the big three.
It worked beautifully. The three S-boys each averaged over 17 points and two assists. They took about equal numbers of shots. Each was an excellent three-point shooter, each one could drive, each one could pass. It was impossible to defend. When they missed, one of the giants usually grabbed the rebound as the Blue Devils were one of the nation’s best offensive rebounding teams.
And on defense, the size inside allowed them to take away the three, even if that meant giving up a few drives. Duke ranked second nationally in three-point FG% defense at 28.3%, and only ten teams in Division I allowed fewer three-point attempts as a percentage of total shot attempts. As a result, the Blue Devils averaged less than four made threes allowed per game for the season, which must be close to some kind of record in the modern era.
It was a masterfully constructed team. Pretty much any way you tried to attack them, they had you.
They did lose five games, all on the road: Wisconsin, Georgia Tech, NC State, Georgetown, and Maryland. In a couple of those games, Singler, Scheyer, and Smith all had poor shooting games. Rare but not impossible. In a couple of the others, teams were able to find soft spots on the interior. Duke’s guys were big, but none individually was an exceptional defender or great shot-blocker. A few skilled big men such as NC State’s Tracy Smith, Georgia Tech’s Gani Lawal, and Georgetown’s Greg Monroe were able to have their way inside.
But they finished the regular season at 26-5 and ranked fourth in the country. The ACC Tournament started slowly as Duke faced Virginia in Tony Bennett’s first season. The Cavaliers weren’t very good, but they showed that signature defense in holding Duke to 57 points, its lowest total of the season. Unfortunately for them, they only managed to score 46. The semifinals and finals were not as close as the scores indicated. Duke led both games wire to wire and neither had any real drama.
Duke was the top seed in the South region. In the regionals, the Blue Devils showed their versatility. They won their Sweet 16 game against Purdue with defense, holding the Boilermakers to 37% shooting and owning the glass to overcome a subpar offensive performance. In the regional final, Duke had to survive an 0-for-10 performance from Singler. They did, thanks to nine threes from Smith and Scheyer and 22 offensive rebounds. Baylor led 61-60 at the under 4:00 timeout, but a four-point play by Smith (made free throw, missed free throw, offensive rebound, three) ignited a 12-1 run that sealed the game.
The national semifinal against #6 West Virginia was a tour de force performance. The Mountaineers were one of the few teams in the nation who could match Duke in size and rebounding. But they couldn’t match them on the perimeter. Singler, Smith, and Scheyer combined for 63 points, 17 assists (mostly to each other), and 3 turnovers. Each player individually had at least 19 points and 5 assists. Duke’s big guys just tried to play defense and stay out of the way as the Blue Devils cruised to a 78-57 win.
The national championship pitted Duke against upstart Butler. The Bulldogs had made a memorable Cinderella run through the West region, beating top seed Syracuse and second seed Kansas State in the regionals and Michigan State in the semis. Butler hung their hat on an outstanding defense that hadn’t allowed any opponent in the tournament to score 60 points. As it turned out, that was the magic number in the final, too.
It was one of those tense games where nobody could get a comfortable lead. The first half was back and forth. Duke took a narrow lead early in the second half, and the rest of the game was Butler getting it to a one-possession game, and Duke pushing it back to two. With about a minute left, Butler closed it to 60-59 with the ball, and the game really came down to that possession. Gordon Hayward took a high-arcing, fall-away baseline jumper with Zoubek’s hand in his face, a difficult shot but one that Hayward looked comfortable taking. It was on line but hit the back of the rim. After Duke made one free throw to stretch the lead to two, Hayward had a great look at an open, on balance 40-footer that nearly banked in.
I have a theory around how this team was put together. I have no evidence, mind you, it just makes sense to me. Think about the 2005-2009 Duke teams. Every year they were highly ranked but couldn’t get out of the Sweet 16. These teams were guard-oriented teams that were a bit soft in the middle. The 2006 team in particular was a terrible inside team, which sounds strange for a team with Shelden Williams, but look at the stats.
Meanwhile down the road, Carolina won the 2005 national championship by absolutely dominating the paint. The dominated the paint in 2007 when they swept Duke and in 2009 when they swept Duke again and won another national championship.
Watching all this, Coach K realized that something had to change. He was tired of watching his teams get bullied by their archrivals and come up short in the NCAA Tournament. He decided to go out and get as many big, tough guys as he could find, so that for once his team would be the bully. But he did it in a really smart way that didn’t bog down their guard-oriented offense.
This is an important aspect of the genius of Coach K. He reinvented his approach and his team several times during his career. Most coaches would have looked at Duke’s records from 2005-2009 and told themselves, we were really good but things just didn’t bounce our way. Coach K was honest enough with himself to say, even though we are in the Top 10 every year, this isn’t good enough and we have to change. It takes vision and courage to change things that are really good to get them to great. He was never afraid to do that.