The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Duke basketball isn’t at that point yet. Then again, it sounds like some observers, including the ESPN broadcast team for the No. 11-ranked Blue Devils‘ high-profile losses across their 4-2 start, are beginning to wonder.
Perhaps third-year Duke basketball head coach Jon Scheyer and his centerpiece freshmen, projected one-and-done wings Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel, will learn from the ineffectiveness of the spin-move attack they’ve employed when it mattered most in both of their losses to fellow bluebloods this month.
Or maybe they won’t. Only time will tell, and another potential late-game test lies in the Blue Devils’ home bout against No. 4 Auburn next Wednesday night.
Between Tuesday night’s 75-72 defeat at the hands of No. 1 Kansas in Las Vegas and the 77-72 loss to now-No. 8 Kentucky in Atlanta on Nov. 12, Flagg and Knueppel have possessed the ball at or near the top of the key on each of Duke’s combined four possessions in the final minute that came with a chance to take the lead.
One of those possessions resulted in Flagg driving into the corner with nowhere to go against Kentucky. The other three, twice in Flagg’s hands and once with Knueppel serving as the initiator against Kansas, were spin-move turnovers in the paint.
Not a single one of those four possessions has generated a field goal attempt.
Their spins are not disorienting the defense. Rather, the defenders appear to be telegraphing it, as if the opposing head coaches are learning more about the Blue Devils at this early stage than Scheyer and his crew are recognizing about their own team’s last-minute blooper reels.
No spin necessary. Simple as that.
At this point, it’s a sign of weakness, indicating that Knueppel and Flagg, who drove straight downhill for a smooth left-hander off the glass to tie the Kansas battle at 71-71 with 2:30 to play yet shied away from such a strike via his spin-move turnover two minutes later, aren’t yet confident enough to attack the rim in crunch time without the destructive do-si-do dance steps.
“Well, Kon and Cooper, they had a great two-man game,” Scheyer noted following the loss to Kansas when asked about his team’s plan of attack on Knueppel’s no-dice spin move and turnover with the Duke basketball squad facing a 73-72 deficit with under 10 seconds remaining. “And they were making plays the whole second half.
“They were getting messed up with the switching, whether they were switching or not. And we were looking to get Kon downhill or right back to Cooper, and then he’d be downhill. And end of the day, you want the ball in your best players’ hands…It didn’t go our way, necessarily. I have to look back on it…to see how it unfolded.”
No mention of the spin moves that have done nothing but given the defenders both an extra moment and an open look at the ball to force a stop.
It’s now up to Scheyer to study the tape and notice that they’re playing right into the opposition’s hands — literally.
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