Just before the game started, Duke did a nice little ceremony for Bobby Hurley. Hurley, former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and his successor Jon Scheyer came to midcourt and had a nice moment.
That was probably the last nice moment for Hurley until the very end of the game, which we’ll come back to, because while Duke was the better team and was certainly favored, the Blue Devils really took it to Hurley’s team, winning 103-47.
The first half was at least competitive. Duke outscored the Sun Devils 37-21 despite shooting just 18.2 percent on three point attempts (2-11). Still, the Blue Devils were clearly the better team.
Khaman Maluach, who started this time, got a slam for an easy early basket and helped to lock down the inside.
ASU seemed prepared for Cooper Flagg and didn’t really give him much room to operate offensively. Still, he drove into traffic and forced the Sun Devils to pay close attention, which got other people open looks.
The star of the first half though was Duke’s defense. ASU started out 2-15 and while they hung around, you never got the sense that they were really a threat, even though Duke had trouble hanging on to the ball and, as noted, didn’t shoot well in the first half.
That changed quickly in the second.
Caleb Foster hit a pair of free throws, then Maluach scored inside to push the lead to 41-21.
Kon Knueppel hit a pair of back-to-back threes to push Duke’s lead to 47-23 with 16:50 to go.
Arizona State wouldn’t score a basket until 14:51 was left in the second half. And by that point, while Duke’s defense had asserted itself, the offense had started a three point barrage.
After Knueppel’s quick six, he hit another, then Tyrese Proctor hit one, then Knueppel it another, then Mason Gillis got one.
You started to get a sense of the team’s potential at this point: lock down Flagg and/or Maluach inside and the three point shooters are going to gut you.
After a weak first-half three point shooting effort, Duke finished 17-34. Knueppel was 4-8. Proctor was 2-3. Gillis was 2-3. Sion James hit 3-4. Darren Harris was 2-5.
Duke ultimately shot 38-71 overall, or 53.5 percent.
But it’s hard to get past the strength of the defense.
Duke forced 18 turnovers and converted those into 26 points. ASU scored just once on a second chance attempt and not at all on fast breaks.
This is a team that has the potential to be devastating on offense, but even if no one is shooting very well – like, say, the first half of this game – Duke can really hurt you on defense.
The other thing that jumped out at us was a promise made and kept.
Scheyer promised that this team would move fast and it really did. Even on simple plays they could have walked the ball up, Duke very rarely did (one notable excpetion: Foster came close to a backcour violation. It’s the sort of thing that will be corrected in film review.
Bottom line: the offense was sloppy early and great after halftime, but the defense was good throughout.
Also worth mentioning: Mulauch grabbed 11 against Lincoln last time out, with six offensive. Saturday he had 12 overall, with nine defensive and three on offense. This was in 20 minutes of play.
He’s a work in progress on offense but rebounding? He looks like a tremendous rebounder out of the gate.
As noted, Hurley was probably not very happy about the outcome, but it must have touched him, as it did us, to see Bobby Hurley, #11, on the floor in Cameron.
We refer to his son of course, who is on the roster at ASU. He beat the Boozer twins, son of Duke great Carlos Boozer, to minutes in Cameron by a year.
