Duke opened ACC play Wednesday with an 85-79 win over Georgia Tech. So the Blue Devils are now 12-1 on the season; that’s great. But it was hard not to notice — after Duke had to overcome a seven-point deficit in the second half to avoid being upset at home as 27.5-point favorites — that the Blue Devils were allowing their opponent to shoot above 53% for the second straight game, and that’s clearly not sustainable for any team with real national championship aspirations.
Duke couldn’t keep watch from man to man.
Finally, Blue Devils coach Jon Scheyer switched to a zone.
“We had to do something,” Scheyer explained after the game. “I mean, they got into a rhythm for 25 minutes, shot about 70% from the field and got what they wanted. It was a move out of desperation more than anything.”
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Isaac Trotter
The defense was already bad after Wednesday’s win, but the good thing was that Cameron Boozer and Cayden Boozer, Duke’s freshman twins, started together for the first time this season, adding 39 points, 17 rebounds, five assists and five steals. Cameron, the leading candidate for CBS Sports National Player of the Year, scored 26 of those 39 points. He has now scored at least 23 points in six of the past seven games.
Duke is ranked No. 8 in Thursday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 and 1 daily basketball rankings, with Michigan remaining No. 1 for the 23rd consecutive day. Next up for the Blue Devils is another match against another KenPom under-100 team (Florida State). Due to a scheduling quirk, there are only three KenPom teams under 100 in the ACC (Florida State, Georgia Tech and Boston College), and Duke opens the ACC portion of its schedule with games against two of them (Georgia Tech and Florida State). That’s a boring way to start conference play. But the trip to FSU will be followed by Tuesday’s game at Louisville. So things will get interesting again soon enough.
Top 25 and 1 rankings
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