My first Duke basketball game of the season and it was a fun one with Duke beating the AP #2/USA Today #4 team in the nation.
My thoughts:
Most fun plays to watch were the 4 points scored by Marshall Plumlee. I especially loved his second score where Duke players went to the floor to come up with the ball and then one of them tossed it on to Plumlee for the score.
Jahlil Okafor has some great footwork, often times confusing his Wisconsin defender.
There were some charge calls going both ways where one had to scratch one's head. What exactly is a charge again?
As mentioned, this is my first Duke game, but I did keep an eye on the box scores of previous games. It seemed to me that Tyus Jones was sort of an up and down scorer. In this game he took control and scored the team high while shooting 7 - 11.
Quinn Cook and Jones appear to play well together.
Rasheed Sulaimon came in energized and shot well.
I love how they played defense. I did get nervous when they started to slap the floor with the game still close. What if Wisconsin won? Those scenes would be a bit embarrassing.
I don't recall a single moment where the Duke freshman looked frazzled.
So as I was watching this game in the 2nd half I started to think: why is this game so close? Duke shot an amazing 65.2% for the game compared to 40.7% for Wisconsin. Wisconsin did get more points at the free throw line, but only 4 more. They only had 2 additional 3 point shots. Okay, looking at this on a more conservative basis, that's an additional 6 points. They also got 10 offensive rebounds versus 3 for Duke (of course, Duke didn't have as many chances as they shot so well). I suppose that was the key for this being as close as it was, the 7 additional second chances. But honestly, I just don't get why Duke didn't win this by 15 plus points and really not have this essentially wrapped up with 5 minutes left in the game. That speaks for what a solid team Wisconsin is.
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