Chapter 1: What insights did Jason share about attending the Duke vs. Clemson game?
Thank you.
Hey there, Duke fans. Welcome to episode 798 of the Duke Basketball Roundup. 798. We're getting closer. We're getting closer to the dog. Coming up this week, most likely. I'm Donald Wynne. I'm your host for this episode. We're not here to talk with the dog just yet. I'm here with Jason Evans. Jason and I are here to recap the win over the Clemson Tigers yesterday in Cameron.
67-54 victory by the Blue Devils moves them to 23-2 in the season. 12-1 in the ACC. And Jason, first of all, you are not in your normal spot. You were in Durham. You were at the game yesterday. I was. Before we get to the headlines, let's talk about your experience at the game yesterday. How was it? You sent me a nice picture. I was very jealous.
I immediately looked at tickets for Monday and then realized I'm stupid. I don't even have tickets for next weekend here in D.C. yet, so let me just pump the brakes. But how was it down in Durham yesterday?
A wonderful time, as always. You mentioned that we have episode 800 coming up in the next few days with Kenny Denard. I spent some time hanging out with Kenny and some of his other classmates from Duke teams from the 1970s. I'll just say that a fair bit of alcohol was consumed. A lot of stories were swapped. A lot of stories that will not be repeated on the podcast. I'm sorry, folks.
I heard some stuff. I learned some things that I will not be broadcasting to the larger community. We had a very nice time.
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Chapter 2: How did Duke's defense contribute to their victory over Clemson?
I also met up with a lot of other friends in Durham around the game. It's always special. It's always wonderful to come back here. By the way, my throat, my voice is probably going to give out because, you know, you yell so much. I will say, Donald, we've talked about this. When you and I go to a game, we have the option of getting seats on press row or getting seats in the stands.
I always prefer seats in the stands because I can yell and scream and be demonstrative and have a great time as opposed to you must be more reserved on press row. It's not even more reserved. You have to be reserved. We can't cheer on press row. Right. Exactly. You cannot show...
know overt emotion like i can't even wear i wouldn't even wear a duke like i was wearing a zion williamson jersey for the game yesterday i wouldn't i wouldn't dream of doing something like that if i was sitting on press row but the price you pay is that my vocal cords today not in good shape um but it was a it was a great time a ton of fun you know the other cool thing was
The guy who got me tickets is a member of Duke Legacy, which is a group of folks who've really made very, very meaningful financial contributions to the Duke basketball program. And there's a special legacy room where they go pregame. There's some food and stuff. Everybody socializes. You get to chat with different people. It's a great place to cultivate sources. If you're someone like me.
And in addition to that, one of the things that they do for the legacy folks is that the Duke scouts, the members of the staff who do the scouting stuff, come out and talk a little bit about the game you're about to see. And I thought folks would find this fascinating. And by the way, I cleared all this. in advance with the guy who did the scout. His name is Trevor Marcus.
We've talked about the Marcus brothers before. They are sort of the chief scouting guys for the Duke basketball team. And Trevor told us a little bit about what to expect from Clemson. I just wanted to share a few of these observations. The first thing he said was, this may be the most physical team. It's certainly one of the most physical teams that Duke is going to play all year.
And he said they had told the team, be ready for a war on the inside.
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Chapter 3: What individual performances stood out in the Duke vs. Clemson game?
And I think especially in the first half, Donald, you saw what that war looked like. And it was...
it was somewhat ugly basketball it was you know not a lot of scoring the other thing he mentioned and I thought this was fascinating because I had not I had not figured that like a lot of the things Trevor and I chatted before the game before the before he gave his scout and there were a lot of things that he was talking about that I was like yes I've noticed this and and I've talked about it on my podcast and there you know stuff like that in fact Trevor mentioned at one point uh
Uh, total, total aside, uh, a few weeks ago after one of Duke's games, I had specifically like taken the shot chart from the game and marked, like put little markings on it of where Duke had taken certain shots that I thought were good shots and bad shots and that kind of thing. Trevor's like, oh yeah, you're the guy who did that. He goes, I showed that to the entire staff.
And I'm like, oh my God. Yeah. I'm influencing, so that was fun. But in any event, one of the things that Trevor mentioned about this game that I hadn't even identified was that he said Clemson succeeds when they hold you to a low assist number. He said if Clemson holds you to less than 12 assists, They have a really good chance to win.
If you can get 12 assists or more against Clemson, he said they lose like 50% of their games. And that's one of the things that Duke was focused on in this game was making the right pass to get an extra assist, to get an easier bucket. And, you know, Donald, when we get to the good, we can talk about it. Duke had 15 assists in this game and an assist rate of better than 65%.
That's one of the major reasons we won this contest. But I wanted to shout out... the chief video coordinator and scout for the Duke Blue Devils, Trevor Marcus, who'd said, look out for the Duke assists. That will matter in whether or not we win this game.
Well, first of all, that's very cool. Second of all, all I heard from what you just said, Jason, is that the scouting team listens to our things to watch because the assist rate was something that I pointed out.
Wait, wait, I wouldn't go that far. I wouldn't go that far.
I pointed out the assist rate and how, you know, Clemson had been very good at holding teams under 50%, sometimes under 40% with assist rate, and that was something that had trended down as we moved into the paint. So, yeah, 15 assists was one of the things I was going to talk about later on.
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Chapter 4: What areas does Duke need to improve before their next game?
Brian wrote, Dominant Duke D foils feline foe. Brian knows I love alliteration.
Yeah, we had some good alliteration in some of the headlines. In fact, I'll go to Jim Baumgardner. His alliteration is a total of six words, every single one of them a B. He gave us Boozer Brothers Break, Brad Brownells Band. Yep, I had that one.
Mark Esselstyn wrote Devils Out Muscle, Out Hustle Tigers. That was the last one I had, Jason, because you took the Jim Baumgardner one. So which one did you get left?
Okay, so I got Jason Beer gave us the Valentine's Day Massacre, Blue Devils, Brews, Bewildered Bengals, John Grantland, Tigers, Ragged, Dragged, Tagged, and Begged. Ragged, dragged, tagged, and bagged by the dominant Duke defense. I like that, John. And my last one, Jared Strauss gave us a poem. You know I love my poems.
In honor of Valentine's Day, roses are red, devils wear blue, Clemson is orange, and they had to lose. I like that a little bit. Oh, and I actually had one more I wanted to mention. Devon Leparo, who I think is a first time writer. I don't recall that name from the past. Devon wrote and gave us Duke keeps the cat in the bag. The devil's defense stifles the Tigers.
You know, I'm partial to first time writers. So Devon, as far as I'm concerned, that was your first headline submission. That's a pretty good one.
You know, it's funny. I had that written down and said, Jason's probably going to do that one, so let me do the Jim Baumgartner one. And you took that one too, Jason, so that's why I only had three. But thank you again to everybody who submitted their headlines. Again, you can do that, dbrpodcasts at gmail.com.
After the final of every game, you can get in your headlines, and hopefully it will be on the show.
Yeah, Donald, I want to mention one other thing, which is that usually when I'm at a game, I mentioned I like to sit in the stands, not in press row, but I still usually get access to the postgame press conferences to interview the players and the such. And I will do that for the Syracuse game.
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Chapter 5: What unique experiences did Jason have during the game in Durham?
Yeah. And then he's like, he's like, I get back out there and they're like, OK, go again. He's like, wait, why? But I think it's helpful to Duke that that Khan wasn't in the house because I think the rookie of the year may not be completely sewn up by Cooper yet. It's close, but not completely. And Khan is on his heels.
I mean, it would have been funny if they did the trophy and then flashed both of them. And then they just kind of like. That would have been perfect. Like a Brady Bunch type of tug of war type of thing. But, you know, I digress. Jason.
By the way, I have heard. I don't know for sure, but I've heard that Khan may be in town for the Syracuse game.
So I mean, that'd be great. I would love to see. I always love when those guys come back. They showed the video of man man working out in the gym because it wasn't just they were there to watch the game. They got in some workouts. And and again, I love those guys like, you know, that team will always bring me joy, despite the fact they just fell just short.
But I just enjoy the fact that all our guys come back and are always welcome when they're when they're back. So I think that's cool. Jason, I want to start with the good, and usually I want to talk about the defense, but I saw this stat yesterday from Duke SID, and I had to repeat it first. We talked a little bit a couple games ago about Cameron Boozer stats and how wild they are.
Here's the wildest one I've heard yet. Cameron Boozer is averaging 23 points per game, 10 rebounds per game, and 4 assists per game over his 24 Duke games. No other Division I player has matched those averages over any 24-game span at any time of their career over the last 30 seasons. This man is incredible. I say this because 18 points, 8 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals, 1 block –
Like less than some of those averages. Right. But he still was able to affect everything in this game. And you talked about that trench war inside. Glad we have Boozer in our team because that was the advantage that we always had.
And once he was able to get in there and kind of, you know, figure out Clemson's defense, it helped so many things open up because they had to use so many resources to try and stop him.
So you thought that stat was incredible. I got another one that the Duke stats department tweeted out. So today was the, or today I should say yesterday, was the sixth time that Cameron Boozer led not just Duke, but the opponent, led both teams, was the game's leading scorer, leading rebounder, and leading assist guy. So six times he's led both teams in points, rebounds, and assists today.
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Chapter 6: How did Duke manage to control the pace and scoring against Clemson?
And sure, the shooting sometimes struggled throughout the game. And that was partly due to shot selection, but also partly due to Clemson playing some really tough physical defense in the first, especially 15 minutes of the game. But I just appreciate the fact that no matter what, Duke was like, hey, if we're going to struggle on offense, that's fine. You're going to struggle even more.
Maybe we go a stretch or two without hitting a basket. Your stretches are going to be prolonged. We're going to do the kill shot in reverse. You're going to go 10 minutes without a field goal. You're going to do things like that. Those are the... That's what we saw yesterday. And I will say I saw a lot of people online talking about the crowd not really being into it. I thought they were.
I thought the momentum.
Yeah, no, I was in there. The crowd was pretty good. It wasn't like Carolina game good, but it was a good crowd.
Yeah, I thought the momentum that was carried through on the defense, then how many shot clock violations did they have yesterday? It's like four or five. And that was not counting the ones where they shot with like one second left on the clock, where there was a few possessions where Clemson kind of looked up and said, oh, my goodness, like we're down to the wire again and threw up a prayer.
So the defense, I thought, was square the entire game. And that's what led them to when we finally were able to kind of generate some sort of momentum on the offensive end. It turned a five-point lead into a 15-point lead, and we were able to hold off Clemson the rest of the way.
Yeah, I know we started talking about some of Cam's amazing stats, but I thought the defense was the story of the game. I thought Duke's defense was off the charts good in this game. Clemson came into this game, Donald, averaging 75.6 points per game. We hold them to 54. I mean, do the math. That's 21 points less than their average. But that doesn't even tell the story.
Like you said, they had a late flurry once the game was functionally over to get to 54. They were in the 30s and 40s forever in the second half and really not generating much of anything. The 54 points, Donald, it was their lowest point total of the year. Well, wait, not just that. It was their lowest point total in more than three years.
I mean, again, Clemson isn't one of these great prolific offensive teams, but they usually get into the 60s and 70s at least. And I thought a huge key to it was Dame Sar. Duke lately has been putting Dame on the primary creator for the opposing team. Sometimes it's a point guard. Sometimes it's not. In the case of Clemson, for the most part, it was Dylan Hunter.
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Chapter 7: What were the key statistics that defined Duke's performance?
I was like, what's going on here?
Oh, yeah, yeah. He like stepped on the court to do it. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. He wanted a guy. He was losing his mind on the sidelines at times, you know, yelling at his team. He kept on yelling, move it, move it. Like he wanted the ball to move around faster, but they couldn't like Duke was harassing them so much. They were unable to move it. he was incredibly frustrated at their inability to be productive on offense.
You know, Clemson had a few early possessions where they got the ball to RJ Godfrey in the lane. I talked about the fact that RJ Godfrey is really their primary post score. And they, they, they tried to get it to him. I thought Duke did a really interesting thing, by the way, we started the game with Patrick Gunga. guarding RJ Godfrey. It's like, we knew this guy's not their talk.
Like RJ Godfrey is their third tallest starter, but we're like, but he's the guy who's going to try and score the way a center scores. So we had Pat on him at the start and Clemson, you know, I get, they got a few buckets from Godfrey, but for the most part, they just never looked comfortable on offense at all. Like in the first half, they shot 11% from three, just 32% from the field.
And you mentioned all those shot clock violations or near violations. In the second half, Donald, I swear, it felt like Clemson, on at least half or two-thirds of their possessions, they were taking a shot with less than five seconds left on the shot clock, like again and again and again.
And part of that is Clemson wants to play slow, but a lot of that is Duke wasn't letting Clemson get anything good.
The tempo, according to Ken Palm, their tempo numbers went down six spots just based off yesterday's game. They were already in the 300s, so it wasn't much further they can go down when you talk about overall adjusted tempo. But I think also, Jason... when you think about Clemson and the fact that we talked about that, they don't have really one guy.
They look to, that can be a detriment when you're behind and when you're late in the shot clock, because for us, we go, okay, we're going to try to get the ball to cam and, Next down the line, it may be Slim.
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Chapter 8: What are the expectations for Duke's upcoming game against Syracuse?
Next down the line after that is probably Pat. You have kind of a hierarchy when you're inside 10 seconds of figuring out who to get the ball to for a particular moment. When you don't have one of those guys, you saw what happened yesterday in the form of Clemson kind of trying to throw the ball around saying, you take the shot. No, you take the shot. No, who's going to take the shot?
I don't know who's going to take the shot. By then, they look up, it's one second left, and as you mentioned, they either throw up a prayer or they didn't get it off at all, and we got a shot clock violation. I think...
The note that the nameless star lineup rotation kind of came back to bite them, especially when they were down because they didn't have anybody that they can fall back on to say, hey, we need to get out of this rut. This guy's going to get us a bucket. And I think Dames are the two guys that you mentioned that he keyed in on at times.
Those are the guys they kind of tried to look for initially, and then they realized we can't do that because they're being suffocated over here by Dame Saar. I just look at the stats, and I look and see that their top scorer had 12, which is Carter Welling. RJ Godfrey had 10, and I think six to eight of them were in the first five minutes of the game.
And then after that, it was just, who's by the basket? Who can take the shot? And so that's where the defense, I thought, was really stellar and just saying, if none of y'all are going to be the heroes today, that's great. We're just going to strangle all of you on defense and make sure that none of you can take a shot.
And I thought that was why our momentum was so great in the second half, because when they were trying to figure out a way to claw back into this game, they just couldn't. because we had all their angles covered. And on the other side, we were able to take that and turn it to a point to the other end and just kind of slowly but surely stretch that lead out until it was insurmountable.
Yeah, and one of the guys who's very responsible, I think, for stretching out that lead, we talked about Cam Boozer, Caden Boozer. I thought Caden had – John Shire in the post-game press conference said he thought Caden played close to a perfect game. He missed his two three-pointers there. And John said, but he's going to make those. They've seen in practice. Caden's release isn't perfect.
It needs to be a little bit quicker. I think one of the things they'll work on in the offseason is remaking some of the mechanics on his three-point shot. But he's a better three-point shooter than what we've seen for the most part this year. But John talked about it. Caden just plays with such great pace.
Like the ball is always moving faster, moving faster up the court, moving faster around the perimeter and the such. When Caden Boozer is in the game, he's getting more and more consistent. John talked about the fact that Caden is trending up, up, up like every game when they're grading. the players and stuff like that, their grades on Caden are getting better virtually every game.
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