Chapter 1: What was the significance of Duke's win over Notre Dame?
Hi there, Duke fans. Welcome to episode 802 of the Duke Basketball Roundup. We are here early on a Wednesday morning, Donald and Jason, to recap an absolute, would you call it a molly whopping or a beatdown, Donald? Which one was it?
A beat-em-down. That was a beat-em-down. If you know Bomani Jones, a beat-em-down is something severe. Higher on the level of a beat-down. Not quite a molly whopping, but we were very, very close.
The first half was a molly whopping, that's for sure. Duke beats Notre Dame 100-56. There are many superlatives about this contest, Donald, many like records, people going back in the history books to 1898. I mean, it's kind of insane. Some of the stuff happening in this game. Let's go ahead. Yeah.
No, I want to do some of those parallels because I know we heard the one during the broadcast, the worst home loss for Notre Dame since 1898. That was to Chicago First Regiment. We know this because they spent like 10 minutes talking about Chicago First Regiment being the team that beat Notre Dame so bad.
Shout out Chicago First Regiment. It's been a while since we've talked about them on this podcast.
Yeah, yeah. The date we had way, way back when, big matchup. Looking forward to seeing them again down the line, maybe. No, John Shire becomes the first head coach in ACC history to record multiple 40-point road wins against conference opponents in a year. The first time Duke has scored 100 points in regulation during an ACC road game, Jason, since February 11th, 1999.
They beat Virginia on the road, Jason. That score, 100-54. So it has been, what, 26 years? It's been a minute. And Jason, maybe most importantly of this is, with that win last night, Duke secures the double bye in the ACC tournament, so we will not be playing in the first two rounds in Charlotte.
Okay, we got a bunch of headlines. There's so much we can talk about from this contest. I want to start by mentioning this, Donald. In terms of the headlines, I think we had three or four different people who sent in limericks and poems, and I want to apologize to them. None of them quite worked. None of them were all that good, so I couldn't read any of them, but...
keep them coming they inspired me i went ahead you know i had a couple minutes this morning i did my own little limerick on this game so here we go uh the boys who play for coach john shire came into this game riding higher but instead of overlooking brave notre dame their domination should be in the hall of fame a 46-point victory really great the biggest at notre dame since 1898. see people it's not hard i just did it for you
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Chapter 2: How did Duke's offensive and defensive balance contribute to their victory?
I liked that one.
Yeah. There was someone else who had one that was similar, had like Newt Rockne and Rudy and all those ones, like just barely missed the cut. But those were good. I have a couple more, Jason. One from Travis Simone, who wrote Irish iced in immediate in-house implosion. Thank you, Travis, for that.
And Dave, Donald, that was a six word. alliteration using the letter I. That is not easy.
It's very new. We don't get a lot of teams that have I's. They start with I's on our pod. So I'm sure Travis was saving that for Rainy Day, and thankfully it was last night. So thank you, Travis, for that. And then finally, for me at least, Dave Jordan wrote in, Donald's kind of game. Duke wins and blow it over Irish. Yes, sir, Dave. This was my kind of game. This is what I'm here for.
My last two, Jared Strauss gave us no letdown for Duke as devils make Irish look like leprechauns. I thought that was amusing. And Nick Soprano, Nick sent us like 10 headlines. I mean, Nick was like, pick one of these, please. So, Nick, I got time. I got you, Nick. His best was Duke's performance was magically delicious. Little Lucky Charms reference there. I like that.
Mm hmm.
All right, Donald, let's get to you and I recapping the good from the game. I'm going to go ahead and say super balanced attack from the Blue Devils. I mean, that's always fun. Everybody got to eat a little bit in this game. My friend Steve Douches, who listens to our podcast and has lived with me at Duke for many years, Steve pointed out that we got 36 points
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Chapter 3: What historical records were set during the Duke vs. Notre Dame game?
from three-point range, 30 points from two-point range, and 34 points from one-point range from the free throw line. I mean, wow. How about the balance there of attacking at all different levels of the game? And by the way, we shot 34 of 38 at the free throw line, 34 of 38, including two huge free throws from Darren to get us to 100 points. Way to go, Darren.
I just love the balance in the way Duke attacked and the balance scoring as well.
You know, I think it even goes back further. In the preview, I mentioned that this was being treated as a business trip, right? After the win here in D.C. on Saturday, Duke did not return to Durham. They did not give themselves a chance. They kind of get swallowed up by the euphoria after that big win, which was a very big win. They went straight to Chicago.
They got some hot dogs, they trained, and then they went to South Bend and they treated it as a business trip. And because of that, Jason, they came out strong. They, they, they came out in what, by the under, you know, 12 media time out in the first half, this game was pretty much over. That's how well they were playing in those first eight minutes.
I mean, it was at one point, I think it was what, 20 to four. And I don't think Notre Dame ever got closer than that. The rest of the game, the fact that they were able to come out strong and Jason, this was a kind of an oddity. This team, this Notre Dame team, we talked about how slow they play. And we talk about how slow Duke likes to play on defense because they grind teams to a halt.
There were 72 possessions in this game. And mainly it was because Notre Dame was taking some shots. They were missing them, especially in the first half, where they only shot 26% from the floor.
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Chapter 4: What strategies did Duke employ to dominate the game early on?
And we were going the other way and scoring very quickly. So we had a lot of fast break points. We had a lot of early shots where they were open. I just loved how this team played and considered, you know, make this an extended business trip. They took care of business in South Bend last night.
Well, yeah, what I noticed was the way Duke was pounding it inside early against a smaller team, like literally Duke's first possession. Pat scores in the post. And then on the third possession, Cam gets a give and go dunk from Pat. And then like on the fourth or fifth possession, I think it was Boozer returned the favor to feed Pat for a dunk.
It's like Duke understood we have this major advantage. On the inside, both in terms of skill and in terms of size and like, you know, like anyone would, they took advantage of it. Duke out rebounded Notre Dame 49 to 27. If you're not doing math in your head, that's a 22 rebound advantage. The seventh time this year, the Duke has had a 20 plus rebound advantage in a game.
You know, we killed him on the offensive boards, even though we weren't missing lots of shots. Duke knows – I mean, look, Michigan was supposed to be the best front line in all of college basketball, and we dominated them on the boards. We dominated them inside. Duke knows we're better than everybody. It's real easy, I think, to maybe go, oh –
take that advantage and just go ahead and exert it every game. But it does take some intentionality. It takes some commitment by the team. It takes some execution. And Duke did that early on. And that's why the reason the game felt, I mean, besides the fact that it was 20 to 4 after like six minutes, the reason the game felt over from the start was it was clear that
Duke could do whatever it wanted on the inside. It didn't have to in every possession, but it could. And as a result, there was no chance for Notre Dame. And I think that's why, you know, one of the amazing things about this game, I may have missed it, but I don't think Micah Shrewsbury called a timeout. Like, Duke beat his team by 40-plus points. He didn't even bother to call it.
And I don't want to imply that he gave up or anything like that, but there was little he could say to help his team out or stem the momentum. It was just a matter of one team vastly outclassing the other, which again, and we mentioned this on the preview, Notre Dame, as injured as they are, just don't have the horses to compete with Duke.
And he joined them on the injured list because he got hurt himself or late in the first half. It was weird in the sense that we got a couple emails, Jason, from people who were like, did he give up? And it didn't feel like it, but as you kind of responded to, just the writing was on the wall very early in this game.
It's not often you get to say that at the under-12 media timeout in the first half that a game was, by all accounts, over because that's how they were playing. And they were missing shots. not doing the right things to get into this game and establish something. The crowd was taken out of it very quickly.
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Chapter 5: What were the standout performances from Duke's players in the game?
What a crazy score. Not that we need to duplicate that, but Notre Dame got a lot of easier looks in the second half. I don't blame the guys that much for not playing quite as hard on defense as they were in the first half, but I noticed Sir Muhammad was able to attack the lane off the dribble on Duke in ways that would have bothered me if this had been a close game.
Also, in the first half, Brady Kohler was just taking it at Cameron Boozer in ISO and actually had some success doing that early on. I was like, what's happening here? But nothing to worry about too long term. I will note, as I mentioned earlier, that both Patrick Gongba and Malik Brown ended up this game with four fouls.
Neither one of them played like big minutes, but we need to find ways to keep them in games and not limit their minutes by fouls. Clearly, Duke needs those two guys to be available as much as possible. So I'm troubled that we continue. Those guys, both of them seem to continually be in foul trouble in games.
And Duke just needs to find a way to have that not happen because we need them in a big, big way. Hey, let's get to the play of the game, Donald. I'm going to go first. I wonder if I have the same one as you. It's sort of the most absurd play of the game it could possibly be. But yeah, I went with with 415 left. Jack Scott just snatched a steal and fed the ball ahead to Darren Harris for a dunk.
I just love that. I mean, there are a lot of probably moments from this game, but come on. Jack Scott getting a steal and moving it ahead to Darren Harris for a dunk. You don't see that every game. So that was my play of the game. How about you?
It was mine for the simple reason that Jack Scott had subbed into the game like 15 seconds before that happened. So he subbed in at 430. His first touch of the game is a steal, goes on a break, and then a sweet kind of half-no-look dish to Darren for the dunk.
So, yeah, again, in a game where there's a ton of maybe the most important play was the first shot of the game when it made 2-0, and the lead became at that point what seemingly was insurmountable. That play was the fun play to guys who don't get to play as much coming into the game and immediately making an impact. That was a lot of fun to see them be rewarded with that play.
All right. We're kind of done with this game, but we got a couple other things we want to talk about. The first one is this. I want to just very quickly mention the ratings of the Duke Michigan game. The Duke-Michigan game pulled 4.3 million viewers at its peak. It was 5.4 million people watching that game. It was the most watched college basketball game on ESPN in seven years.
The seventh highest rated ESPN game in history for ESPN. I mean, we talked about what a big game it was and how excited people were for it. Wow. Those numbers are just jaw-dropping.
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