Duke 134, Shaw 55

There wasn't a whole lot of doubt that Duke was going to win this game, but that was quite an impressive performance nonetheless. Duke was up 51! after the break, hanging 68 points in a 47 possession half, and then followed that with a just slightly lower 66 points in a 47 possession second half. Without actually seeing the game, it's tough to tell if the pace was a breakneck as 94 possessions looks, or whether it was a product of Shaw's complete inability to hold on to the ball (they turned it over on 37% of their possessions), but it any regard, it's clear that the Devils got out and ran last night. Duke was dominant in all aspects of the game (except maybe 3-point shooting) - huge rebounding edge, huge turnover edge, excellent interior shooting, and lots of blocks. A good start to the season. Here's the HD Box:

O. Poss

D. Poss

+/-

Pts

2PM-A

3PM-A

FTM-A

FGA

Ast

TO

STL

BLK

ORB

DRB

Thomas

47

44

+52

15/74

6-6

0-0

3-4

6/47

1/20

2/47

5/44

0/28

5/23

2/19

Scheyer

56

56

+49

11/81

2-4

1-6

4-4

10/51

3/28

0/56

5/56

0/36

1/23

2/25

Henderson

59

55

+48

15/82

6-9

0-2

3-4

11/58

2/24

1/59

2/55

0/36

0/31

5/23

Singler

43

47

+39

23/64

10-10

0-1

3-4

11/43

0/21

1/43

2/47

3/33

2/21

3/24

Paulus

51

50

+38

10/66

1-1

2-6

2-2

7/47

6/21

3/51

1/50

0/34

1/23

4/25

Smith

38

37

+38

11/60

3-4

0-0

5-10

4/35

7/19

0/38

1/37

0/25

2/16

0/16

Nelson

53

53

+38

17/67

4-12

1-4

6-6

16/46

3/21

1/53

3/53

1/38

5/22

3/28

Zoubek

43

41

+31

10/60

5-6

0-0

0-0

6/34

0/17

4/43

1/41

4/33

4/13

5/22

King

55

54

+26

10/70

2-4

2-7

0-0

11/48

3/23

0/55

1/54

1/36

1/23

8/25

Pocius

20

22

+23

10/38

1-1

2-2

2-2

3/17

0/10

1/20

0/22

0/20

0/4

1/14

Davidson

5

6

+3

2/8

1-1

0-0

0-0

1/4

0/3

0/5

0/6

0/4

0/1

1/4

Duke

94

93

+79

134

41-58

8-28

28-36

86

25/49

13/94

21/93

9/65

21/40

35/45

0.707

0.286

0.778

51.02

13.83

22.58

13.85

52.50

77.78

A couple of comments. First, as you can see from the +/- stats, Duke was more than a point per possession better than Shaw while three separate guys were on the floor - Thomas, Smith, and Pocius. That is, um, ridiculous. You'll notice we had almost 2 points per possession when Marty was in - the team shot 10-10 from 2 with him in the game. Second, big game for the post players - Zoubek, Singler, and Lance combined to go 21-22 from 2, gathered nearly 20% of all available offensive boards among them, and blocked about 15% of all Shaw's shots. Third, the "starter's minutes" went to Henderson, Scheyer, Nelson, Paulus, and (surprise, surprise) King. And fourth, Paulus and Smith never shared the floor. They subbed in for directly for each other all night. My hunch is that if Smith is going to get a decent number of minutes this year (i.e., more than 10/game) that will change before too long.