Hardin: How good is Duke? Big questions to come later
Thursday, January 8 ( updated 5:44 am)
By Ed Hardin
Staff Columnist
DURHAM -- The annual quest to answer what has become an annual question continued Wednesday night.
How good is Duke?
Through 14 games and now a 79-67 win over Davidson, the answer is beginning to come into focus. Duke is pretty good. The long-term prospects appear fuzzy as ever.
Then again, it's only January. The real questions come later.
Duke muscled past Davidson, just as have almost all its opponents this season. A perplexing loss to Michigan and a 3-point win over Rhode Island notwithstanding, the Blue Devils are now 13-1 and ranked second in America with two ACC road games coming up.
The red-meat portion of the schedule comes much later, which will give Mike Krzyzewski plenty of time to figure out for himself just how good his team is.
"We're 13-1," he said. "That's what it feels like."
Duke had the unique experience of going up against the Davidson thing Tuesday, playing a nationally televised game against college basketball's darling program. The game was hyped for days because of the ESPN decision to send an NBA announcing team to the Cameron crows nest and college mouthpiece Dick Vitale to an NBA game on the same night.
With the nation's sports fans taking a night off from football, the Duke-Davidson game was largely a live event made for ESPN and the 9,314 people squeezed into Cameron Indoor Zoo. The kids packed the place to see their classmates play Stephen Curry, the marquee player from Charlotte and the cherubic face of college basketball.
Duke has no such faces, and Krzyzewski had to remind his team of that several times. He excoriated his players to get strong, even going so far as flexing for his team while demanding they start showing the visiting Wildcats the red-face anger of the Blue Devils' man-to-man defense.
A 26-point lead had been whittled to eight, and Duke's most exciting free-throw shooter was on the line. Lance Thomas, who's been known to miss in key moments, made two to stave off Davidson and protect Duke's psyche.
"All was good in Krzyzewskiville," Krzyzewski said. "And then all of a sudden the clouds came, and the wind and then it's eight points and Lance is on the line. How the hell did that happen?"
There weren't many questions as to which defense Duke would employ against Curry, the nation's leading scorer. Much has been made of recent strategies. During the NCAA tournament run last year, Curry saw physical defenses and soft defenses, man defenses and zone defenses, triangles, boxes, diamonds and other oddly devised attempts to slow him. Earlier this year, he was double-teamed for an entire game and held scoreless by Loyola (Md.), which lost by 30.
Duke played him straight up in a switching man-to-man, forced him to earn his 29 points, and wore down the mere mortals on Bob McKillop's roster, including McKillop's son Brendan, who struggled at times against Duke's withering pressure. With about seven minutes left in the first half, with Krzyzewski turning purple on the sideline demanding his team play even harder, Duke had held Davidson to 12 points, none by Curry.
"They put you on your heels," McKillop said. "They expose you. They undress you, and unless you stay in the center of the ring and fight from the center of the ring instead of back-peddling and getting caught on the ropes, you're never going to be successful against Duke."
Duke is another year removed from its last NCAA title (2001) and three years removed from the graduation of rock stars J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams. In that time, Duke has been pretty good, rising high in national rankings only to fall hard late. Now 13-1 in the first week of January for the third straight season, the Blue Devils will ultimately be judged the first weekend of the NCAA tournament, where Duke's last two seasons have ended.
When this one began with largely the same roster for a third straight year, Duke slipped out of the national view. And until last weekend's loss by North Carolina, every school in America was in UNC's shadow. But the Boston College win thrust all the contenders into the national spotlight and propelled Duke to second in the country in the mythical polls.
Duke might be the second-best team in America, but it really doesn't matter in January. The returning roster is a year older and wiser, and sometimes, stronger. Right now, Krzyzewski will settle for strong. He can work the rest in later.
"We beat a very good team and a great player," Krzyzewski said.
Duke blew past darling Davidson and its rock-star guard with tough man-to-man defense that saw as many as six different Blue Devils guarding Curry. In the end, second-ranked Duke won the game, protected its floor and answered a few questions about itself in the process.
The big questions come much later.
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