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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hi there, Duke fans. Episode 804 of the Duke Basketball Roundup. It is almost exactly an hour after the game against NC State ended, and we are giving you everything we can get for you in the first hour. I'm Jason Evans. My buddy Donald Wine is here with me. Donald, I was... I'm going to just say it. I was prepared... For this to be a tense game against NC State, this is a game they needed.
I mean, State really, really wanted this one. It sold out. I mean, like, it had all the... Duke has struggled. Duke has struggled in that arena in the past. We definitely have. And instead, it was calm, relaxing, relentless, just... I don't know, dude, like, do we appreciate how good this Duke team is? Maybe we're not appreciating them enough. I don't know. I mean, I appreciate them.
I appreciate the hell out of them. I appreciate the fact that in Kempom, they gained over one full point in the ratings. So they are over 40, plus 40. If you know that number, that's a huge number. Jason. Donald, I think, I'm not certain, because I can't go back and check every single day, but I believe... that they are the first team since the 1999 Duke team. That's correct. To be over 40.
I believe the 2001 team was at like 39.9 or something like that. Well, last year they were in the upper 39s occasionally last year as well. They may have at some point – I can't go back and check every single day. I haven't had time to yet. But regardless, I mean, we're talking about, and so folks understand what this means.
What Ken Pomeroy's efficiency computers and the such are telling you is that if the Duke Blue Devils played an average team, the average team in the NCAA, they would win by 40 plus points. What? Now, Jason, hear what you just said, because what I was going to tell you was something that was related to that. At the 11-0-3 mark of this game, it was 18-18.
We outscored NC State 75-46 the rest of the way to clinch the outright ACC regular season title. So, yes... Kempom knows something. The computers know something about this team. They're very, very good. All right, we're going to get to the headlines in one second.
I want to start with just a couple sort of random, like, historical kind of things and just other stuff that I've seen because the social media world is full of people saying, like, good God, this Duke team. Oh, my goodness. So, by the way, Manny Diaz is at the game. So is Sherry Knipple. Sherry, friend of the podcast, Sherry's great. She is the best. And, by the way, it's notable.
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Chapter 2: What were Dame Sarr's standout performances in the game?
Duke has had a double-digit lead in 63 of their last 69 games over the past two seasons. The past two seasons, Duke has had a double-digit lead at some point in the game in 63 of 69 games. I'll ask the question again. What are we even talking about here? Greg Von Buschberger, one of our listeners, wrote to us and said, at 28-2...
This Duke team now has the best record through 30 games of any Duke team since the 99 team. In 1999, they were 29-1 at this point in the season. Duke is now 28-2. They are actually tied, this Duke team. Here are the Duke teams in history who have been 28-2. 1986, my freshman year. 1992, national title, baby. 1998, 1999, which is the greatest team in the history of the Ken Palm era, and 2026.
That's the list. 86, 92, 98, 99, and 26. Duke teams to be 28-2 or better. Ah, my goodness, my goodness, my goodness. And the last two things I wanted to note, Brian Roth on Twitter said, And this one stings a little bit, Donald. He said, if this Duke team had Cedric Coward, we would be canceling the NCAA tournament right now. It's wild to think about that.
It's wild to think about that possibility. And it's funny enough, at the beginning of the year, I feel like Duke fans were more worried that we weren't going to be able to replace Cedric Coward. We seem to have found replacements in many different ways. Yeah, his name is Dame Sar. And speaking of that, Jeff Goodman, National basketball writer wrote this.
He said, when Dame Sarr is playing like this, I don't think anyone can beat Duke. I think he's right. I think he's right about that. I just want to read another stat. Of course, Duke men's basketball tweets out stats all the time. And a lot of them are just completely stupid because of how when you read them, you have to read them 17 times before you actually start to believe that they're true.
But they are. Jason, here's just a list of the highest win percentages when leading by 15 plus points at halftime in the last three years. Oh, I love this. I saw this one. I had it for later, but you do it now. Go ahead. UVA is 143-0 when leading by 15 points or more at half. Utah State also 143-0. Maryland is 156-0. All these are 100%, by the way, if you're doing the math.
And this is over the last 30 years. Over the last 30 years. So Maryland, second place, 156-0. Duke moved to 279-0 when leading by 15-plus points at half. By the way, I think one of the reasons they researched that and put that out is the whole, like, oh, Duke blows leads thing. Yeah. I mean, again, let's put it this way. Duke men's basketball is severely online.
Did you see the other day some guy was like, oh, it was some NC State guy or I'm sorry, UVA guy who was like, man, like years ago, he said, if they get John Shire, that'll be the greatest thing for UVA basketball. It was a UVA guy. Yeah. Yeah, and, like, after the game on Saturday, they were like, update? Yeah, wish granted, buddy. Yeah. I think he said it would be a dream or something like that.
It would be a dream if they hired him, like, basically to say that they would dominate the ACC, and they were just like, they had posted two years ago, and they're like, hey, do you still think this way? And then on Saturday, they just posted update, and everybody was like, oh, here we go. Yeah, exactly. Oh, my goodness. All right, let's get to the headlines, Donald.
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Chapter 3: How did Duke respond to NC State's initial challenges?
And I said, hey, Dame, you're being a little too aggressive on offense. You know, your forays into the lane, your drives, your attempts to dunk. These aren't working. I was wrong. I apologize. I take it all back. Hey, he listens to the pie, then that's great.
I think we should encourage everyone on the staff and the players to listen to the pie because we give good feedback and we scout these teams just like they do. So it's just like supplemental to what they do, which is great. Yeah, so my good, yes, Dame Sar, of course. But I also want to talk about Duke's defense, and you've got to talk about Dame Sar when you're talking about the defense.
Once again, just stifling. Congrats to State on getting lucky in the final few seconds and getting over the 60-point mark. Once again, we have ACC teams that are managing to play two or three minutes against Duke's walk-ons and figuring out that's the way they can get – Boy, yeah, hey, Jack Scott's in the game. Cameron Sheffield's in the game. We got a chance to get to 60 points here, guys.
That's the only way you're getting to 60 against this Duke team, the way they're playing. It's ridiculous how good our defense is. Darian Williams, who circled this date on his calendar the moment he committed to NC State, like hyping himself up. Hey, buddy, shot six of 17 on the game. Congrats on barely making a third of your shots, buddy.
The other really mouthy guy in this NC State team, Quattier Copeland, didn't even get to 30% or didn't get to hitting a third of his shots. He was just three of 10 from the field. A guy in Quattier Copeland who rarely turns the ball over had three turnovers and repeatedly tried things that didn't work, didn't work, didn't work. State hit just 44% of their two-point shots. 44% on twos.
a state team that is a great three-point shooting team, like close to 40% on threes, hit 24% of their threes. Duke had three blocks and two steals. Like, that's nothing. I point that out to say that's nothing special. This Duke team, we're not like, oh, unbelievable at turning you over. Oh, unbelievable at protecting the rim. No. What we do is we get in front of you. We move our feet.
We don't foul you. And we say, go ahead. Make a difficult shot on us. If you can do that, we'll tip our hat to you. But you know what? You can be able to do that all game long. In fact, you're probably going to shoot about 40 percent or so from the field doing that. And it's just really, really hard to win a game when you shoot that poorly.
And Duke just does this game after game after game again and again and again. We are impossible for teams to get in a rhythm against. Teams are constantly looking up and being like, oh, crap, the shot clock's under five. What am I going to do now? NC State's like Virginia, like all these other teams we play. NC State's a good offensive team. We made them look silly at times.
I can't even describe how good this Duke defense is right now. It is impressive. And to couple with that, it's not like we turned them over a lot. I think they only had six turnovers or something like that on the game. So it wasn't like we were forcing them. And I think maybe three of them were where they just threw the ball away. So it's not like we were getting a lot of steals on them.
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Chapter 4: What adjustments did Duke make to dominate the second half?
And do you see Quinnier Copeland just lie on the ground face staring straight up at the ceiling as if to say, yep, that's me. You're wondering how I got in this position. It's because I was stupid. I went to a bad situation with some bad people, and they ate my lunch. So the defense that we had was suffocating. We got defense from everybody. I mean, even Caden Boozer got a block.
He's the shortest guy on the floor for us, and he got a block. There is stuff going on with all these guys. And I think what was kind of fueling them is, oh, you want to talk some trash? Sure. Go ahead and talk your trash. Hit your threes. You're talking, you're chirping. And then we shut them up big time. And when they shut up, so did the crowd.
That crowd was empty by halftime because they knew it was over. Yeah, I had a friend who was there, my buddy Chris Farrell. He's been on this podcast with us in the past. Chris was there. He's playing with the band, by the way. Chris is in the alumni band, and they gathered. There were a bunch of them there for this game, which was, I thought, very, very cool.
And Chris said it was like – he goes, people started leaving. and with eight minutes left, Chris goes, the place is empty. You could tell it was just blue and red seats for the last eight minutes of the ballgame. There were times, even in the first half, there were times where I was listening to the broadcast, I'm like...
it's like a funeral in there there's it there's just no the state crowd was ready to rock and roll and we did not let them do that at all and look you talked about that rebounding battle and how dominant duke was inside uh state put together a team that doesn't have a lot of size it's just the reality of what they did you know the kind of guys that will wade brought in through the transfer portal because it's like
You know, with the exception of one player, it's all transfer guys. He just didn't bring in a lot of size. And that was the choice he made. But Donald, I was getting flashbacks. I kid you not. I was getting flashbacks to me playing pickup basketball on the Central Campus Courts. against Ala Abdel Nabi and Robert Brickey, because we used to do that.
Like, I was really good friends with a lot of the guys on the team when I was at school. I lived next door to Ala on Central Campus. He was a good friend of mine, and we would go out sometimes and play a little pickup ball, and for some reason, like, of all my friends, I'm kind of... I'm kind of the tallest of the guys who was playing. And so I would have to guard Allah in the post.
That's what it looked like. NC state was trying to do to cam boozer, Patrick Gung, but at times Jason against Allah, it was NC state against big Pat against cam at times. It was just, I was like, yep, guys, I'm sympathizing. You got no chance in this. I do want to give a size, Jason, the, the analogy of the, of the size comparison. Cause again, I think quite your Copeland had the same thing too.
He kind of walked out core, like, man, I'm bigger than these dudes. And then he stood next to Isaiah Evans. It was like, Oh, nevermind. The saying goes, Jason, you've seen a Chrysler 300, right? Chrysler 300 looks like a Rolls Royce until it's standing next to a Rolls Royce. I love that. I do want to give State full credit. Coming out there and playing zone...
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Chapter 5: What does KenPom's efficiency rating say about Duke's performance?
And he's been doing this now, game after game after game. Like, hey, Cam, you're allowed to shoot a little more, buddy. You know, you can maybe take one or two extra shots. By the way, he shot double-digit free throws. He had 11 free throws. Shot double-digit free throws for the third game in a row. He's getting to the free throw line. He's getting to his spots on the inside.
26 points on 10 field goal attempts? It's just... Just so insane. It was his 24th straight game with at least 15 points and five rebounds. I saw this stat. This is pretty good. 24 straight games with 15 points and five rebounds. That ties him with Zach Eadie, the man mountain who played at Purdue for a little while, two-time player of the year, Zach Eadie.
Cam Boozer and Zach Eadie both have the longest streak of 15 points and five rebounds in the past 15 years of college basketball. I got bad news for you, Zach Eady. Cameron Boozer has more games to play. Anyone want to bet against him getting 15-5 against Carolina? I don't think that's going to be very likely. Just insane how consistent and how good he is.
And I want to mention one other thing about Cam really quick, and then I'll let you get in. So I'm not sure if you noticed this. Cam took and missed. Cam took a corner three in this game. I saw that. He almost never takes corner threes. I went ahead and looked. It's just his 13th corner three on the year. He's just five of 13 on them, which isn't terrible. It's 38% or so. It's not bad.
It's not as good as he is elsewhere, but he's only taken 13 corner threes on the year. There are five zones. Technically, there are five zones on the floor, Donald. There's at the rim. There's in the paint. There's the mid-range two. There's the corner three, and there's the non-corner three. The corner three is just barely his second least favorite shot. You know what his least favorite shot is?
the mid-range two he's only taking 12 was the last time he's been at the free throw line when he's not shooting free throws like yeah exactly right like well five weeks ago other than dribbling and driving guys yeah no cam takes super super efficient shots and he knows what he's doing to avoid the mid-range jumper and the corner three those are his two lowest shooting percentages are mid-range jumpers and corner threes he's way better at threes out top
than he is on corner threes i just thought that was very very interesting that i was like cam took a quarter three what the heck and i mean even that three that he made you know out was i guess on the wing i think he missed the corner three and hit the one on the wing yes um the one he hit on the wing like you could see that it was a play where nc state was like where are these guys on the floor nobody is in their normal position we had caleb foster down low we had dame sarah on the wing
We had, like, Nick and Minia in the corner. They look to the other corner, and it's Isaiah Evans or something like that. And then they turn – oh, it was Caden Boozer, I think, had the ball at the top of the key. And then they flash to – he flashes it to his brother. And before – the ball is, like, halfway in the air.
And you see the NC State guys kind of look up at the ball and go, where's that ball coming from? They look and see Cameron Boozer in full form, and they just kind of start running down towards the other end of the court because they know it's going in. They didn't even stay to watch it. That was how efficient this team was getting.
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Chapter 6: How did John Shire's coaching impact the game's outcome?
Yeah, CFOS is having a little moment here, past few games. He's getting a lot of assists, not many turnovers. He's like low, you know, he's like not bothering to shoot. When I'm wide open from three, I'll take a shot, I guess. But other than that, CFOS is kind of like, I'm just going to play great defense on whoever the second best perimeter guy is on this team.
And I'm just going to feed my teammates and find them and give them easy shots. There we go. I just mean, man, the way these guys are playing right now, it's just craziness. I mean, look, I think everyone with the exception of Darren Harris and Cam Sheffield got assists tonight. The ball was moving very, very well. Everyone was finding each other. And again, that's how you break a zone.
That's how you break down a zone. You don't have to score off the pass, but passing is going to make it where these guys get out of their sorts. And once they're out of their sorts, a zone can break down very easily. And that's when you can find those holes to get those points. How many alley-oops did we have? where we kind of broke down the zone. All of a sudden, it was three on one.
And essentially, like, one guy is throwing up the ball and is like, okay, which guy am I going to pass to because I have two options here? Either way, the ball was going through the hoop. So I really liked how they were doing it. Caleb Foster, especially with the seven assists, was just finding his teammates.
And in this, for lack of a better word, a scoring rut that he's been in recently, like I said before, he's making up for it by doing so many of the other things. against Virginia was rebounding tonight. It was assists. And so I liked that. He is not because last year, Jason, he was down on himself when he wouldn't get, you know, eight, 10 points.
And you could see that it would kind of affect his mojo. Now he's like, I'm the guy and they may not need me to score. 15 points tonight. But they're going to need these five assists. They're going to need these five rebounds. And he ends with four rebounds and seven assists and six points. He's able to pick and choose his times when he can go and be aggressive on offense.
And sometimes that ends with him going to the hoop, but also sometimes it ends with him passing to another guy who's going to get that bucket. I just love how he's playing and how he is filling out the complement of everything that this team does well. In his past five games, CFOS has 23 assists and two turnovers. Keep that up. I mean, come on. What are we even talking?
He has 13 assists and one turnover in his past two games. But this sort of run of, I'm just going to find my teammates and not turn the ball over. Yeah, stretches back 23 assists and two turnovers in his past five games. Really quick, I wanted to note something about John Shire. What? He has now improved. His record at Duke now is 117 and 24 in his four years.
The 117 wins in his first four years ties Brad Stevens of Butler for the most by any Division I coach in their first four seasons on the job. I strongly suspect Brad Stevens, an outstanding, a great coach.
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Chapter 7: What role did Duke's defense play in the victory?
He's at 117. We'd like to see him to get to 127. That is the number. Terrific. Let's do it. One game at a time, but we're ready. There you go. By the way, speaking of winning the final game of the season, Duke has now... had a lead in 15 consecutive games at the half, led at the half in 15 straight games.
The last time the Blue Devils had a run of 15 consecutive games where they led at the half, 2014-15. Do you remember how that season ended, Donald? I think you do. I do. All right. Hey, we're going to take a quick break. On the other side, a couple little tiny things in the bad, and then we'll talk about our play of the game. All that's coming up in just a moment.
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Start your show today at Spreaker.com. Spreaker, because if you're going to talk to yourself for an hour, you might as well publish it. All right, back here on the DBR podcast, Duke Basketball Roundup, Jason and Donald, as we are reflecting upon the absolute massacre, the beatdown, the destruction of the Wolfpack in Raleigh. On the road, Donald.
By the way, we haven't talked enough about the fact that this Duke team is just destroying people on the road. Goodness gracious. Okay. All right. So what do you have in the bag? I mean, I got a couple little items, I guess. What you got, man? I think the main thing that, I guess, again, for lack of a better word, concerned me was the chaotic start to the game.
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Chapter 8: Why is Caleb Foster's play significant for Duke's success?
Interesting. We'll see. I'm sure somebody, somebody will figure it out. All right, man, we're getting to play of the game. And I'm going to go ahead and say, as I mentioned earlier, it was the baseline drive and slam by Dame Sar was my choice to play the game. But I wanted to mention one other thing that happened. I guess it's technically a play. My play of the game is John Shire calling timeout.
With 38 seconds left. Duke hit a basket. And this is in the first half. 38 seconds left in the first half. Duke hits a basket. And in the previous game against Virginia, I talk about two-for-one opportunities. Final minute, you got a two-for-one chance here. Get an extra possession. Get an extra shot at the basket that they don't get. Against Virginia, Duke had one of those where we hit a bucket.
And Virginia, smart team. Really, really smart. They went ahead, they just, you know, they took their time getting that ball in bounds. Then they sort of rolled it out there nice and slow. And they functionally ate up like five or six seconds that Duke should have had by not inbounding the ball.
Usually the conventional wisdom is, oh, if I take that shot around 35, 38, you know, 40, something like that, I'll have five, eight, 10 seconds left. Virginia foiled that. because they took their time inbounding the ball again. John Shire's like, no one is going to do that to me ever again.
Because in a game where you're beating the brakes off of them, like Duke usually is in the first half, you have an extra timeout if you're John Shire. You've got to use it or lose it timeout. He has a timeout in his pocket. It's just going to evaporate when the horn sounds. So Duke hit that shot with 38.8 seconds left, and John Shire said, timeout!
That way, there was no chance for Virginia to bury any more, to burn, I'm sorry, not Virginia, NC State, to burn any more clock. John Shire made sure that Duke had time for another shot at the very end of the game, very end of the half. And you know what happened?
They ran a beautiful, like, fast break kind of opportunity, and they got the ball to Nick Hemenia, wide open on the wing, and he buried a three-pointer to give Duke that 17-point halftime lead, as we discussed earlier, Donald. Duke is like 5 million and zero when leading by 15-plus points at the half.
So we had that 15-plus point lead thanks to John Shire using that timeout and Nick Kamenia for hitting the shot. That's my play of the game. You know, it's funny, Jason. The way Virginia did it was in response to how we did something against Notre Dame that was very similar. We basically called a timeout.
And after like right before we were about to get the ball so that he can go, OK, look, when you do this play, this play is going to take three seconds. We got, you know, it's 40 seconds on the clock. I'm calling a timeout right now after I made basket because I want to set up a player that's going to take like three seconds. They're going to hit the going to hit the shot.
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