Duke Basketball vs Utah: 75 - 77

Duke's going to have some troubles without Amile Jefferson over the next month or so. Though Duke had some brief stretches of great basketball, it just wasn't enough. With Grayson Allen playing with a flu, Duke just wasn't playing Duke basketball. Amazingly, at the end, Duke had a chance to send the game into a 2nd over-time, but Ingram's shot from a couple feet looked awkward and didn't come close to dropping into the basket.

Duke basically went with a 6 man rotation. Chase Jeter only played 6 minutes. Transfer Sean Obi didn't even get off the bench.

To me, Jakob Poeltl didn't exactly have an amazing offensive game -- he did admittedly score 19 points. But he did have an amazing impact on the defensive end. There must have been 4 or 5 plays where a Duke player drove to the basket and appeared to get intimated by Poeltl -- maybe more than 5 plays. If one needs any other proof, when Poeltl was on the bench, Duke was able to get offensive rebound after offensive rebound.It was kind of amazing. I'm pretty sure that if Ingram had made that shot at the over-time buzzer, Duke would have blown Utah out of the game in the 2nd half. Poeltl had fouled out and considering past experience Duke would have scored every time down the court. Every miss shot would have resulted in a Duke offensive rebound until Duke eventually scored. Oh well. We might be in for a long month of Duke basketball.