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 a 27.5-point favorite — that the Blue Devils allowed their opponent to shoot above 53% for the second straight game, and that’s obviously not sustainable for any team with real national-championship aspirations.
Man-to-man, Duke couldn’t guard.
Eventually, Blue Devils coach Jon Scheyer switched to a zone.
“We had to do something,” Scheyer explained after the game. “I mean, they were in a rhythm for 25 minutes, (shooting) about 70% from the field and getting whatever they wanted. It was a move out of desperation, more than anything else.”
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Isaac Trotter
If the defense was the bad news from Wednesday’s win, the good news was that, while starting together for the first time this season, the Boozer twins combined for 39 points, 17 rebounds, five assists and five steals. Cameron Boozer, the leading candidate for CBS Sports National Player of the Year, got 26 of those 39 points. That means he’s now scored at least 23 in six of the Blue Devils’ past seven contests.
Duke is No. 8 in Thursday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college college basketball rankings, where Michigan remains No. 1 for the 23rd consecutive day. Next up for the Blue Devils is another game against another sub-100 KenPom team (Florida State). In a scheduling quirk, there are only three sub-100 KenPom teams in the ACC (Florida State, Georgia Tech and Boston College), and Duke is opening 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
In: Florida | Out: Virginia
