SYRACUSE, N.Y.— When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you the Orange, make a statement.
The second-ranked Blue Devils took those words to heart Wednesday night at the JMA Wireless Dome, putting together yet another comfortable performance against Syracuse. The 83-54 win, spearheaded by Tyrese Proctor’s 16 points and one of Duke’s most dominant defensive showings in conference play, keeps head coach Jon Scheyer’s team undefeated in the ACC and right on track for a No. 1 seed come Selection Sunday.
“Really proud of the collective effort by really everybody in our team stepping up,” Scheyer said postgame. “The defense, I thought, was really good overall. I love seeing our guys competing, having fun together, and then just everybody being engaged, which I thought we had really everybody on the team step up in different moments tonight.”
Unlike Duke’s win against North Carolina, the name of Wednesday’s game was not offensive dominance. The Blue Devils’ shooting percentage and rebound rates in the first half were mediocre, but they were able to build a sizable buffer thanks to a dramatic 14-6 turnover advantage that accounted for 23 Blue Devil points.
Sometimes this resulted in direct points, but what the stat sheets will not reflect is that it also resulted in plenty of free throws. Kon Knueppel alone went 5-of-5 from the line — part of Duke’s eventual 14 points from the stripe — while Syracuse as a team only attempted four foul shots all game.
But Duke (20-2, 12-0 in the ACC) wasn’t the only team playing solid defense, even if its ability to build an advantage from takeaways indicates so. In fact, Syracuse (10-13, 4-8) succeeded at something rival teams have not: keeping the country’s best player relatively quiet. Wooden Award favorite Cooper Flagg was limited to just 11 points in 28 minutes of play, his lowest since he dropped six points against Incarnate Word in December.
The key to the Orange’s success in stunting Flagg was their stout post defense, headlined by former Colorado center Eddie Lampkin Jr. The Blue Devils struggled to find lanes down low and were instead forced into mid- and long-range jumpers, shots Flagg can usually hit. The result was a bigger-than-normal reliance on Duke’s perimeter threats to preserve, then extend, its lead.
Given this information, Wednesday’s game was predictably closest (20-14 midway through the first half) when Duke wasn’t sinking its 3-point shots and least close (45-27 early in the second half) when it was.
“I want him to take more [shots], but he’s great with it because he loves the fact we won,” Scheyer said of Flagg. “He loves the fact other guys were getting their shots.”
Tyrese Proctor embodied this dynamic perfectly: He was 0-for-2 on his first shots of the game, missed a pair of free throws and finished the first half 3-of-8 from the field. But all three of those makes came from outside the arc, sending the Blue Devils to the locker room with a 37-23 advantage.
“Eventually it’s going to happen if he’s aggressive, I think that’s the biggest thing,” Scheyer said of Proctor’s confidence in his shot. “I love when he’s shot ready. I love when he’s assertive — whether it’s pick-and-roll, driving off the off-ball screens — and what he’s done the last two games, we need him in that mind space.”
Offensive wobbliness aside, the Blue Devil defense made sure Syracuse had to scrape and scratch for every bucket. That was in large part due to Scheyer’s introduction of a player very familiar to the JMA Wireless Dome’s crowd: Maliq Brown.
Brown, who entered to a ring of boos on his Syracuse “Domecoming,” emptied his bag in a vital 24 minutes of play off the bench. Even if his offensive contributions were limited — Brown bricked a three and got stuffed on a fast-break dunk attempt — his defensive work and rebounding were outstanding. At one notable juncture early on, the junior poked the ball out of Lucas Taylor’s hands and bounced it off his back out of bounds, sending Duke the other way for a Knueppel layup.
“Maliq has changed our team dramatically. I mean, Maliq is the ultimate teammate,” Scheyer said. “He’s incredibly unselfish. He’s been everything we could ask for and more, and he’s not going to blow you away with his scoring, but that’s not what he does.”
Brown’s efforts, in addition to some stellar on-ball defense from the Blue Devil backcourt, held Syracuse to a paltry 10-for-28 mark from the floor in the first frame. The Orange’s floodgates began to splinter in the process, allowing threes on three consecutive plays by Isaiah Evans, Proctor and Sion James.
Syracuse fans did get to bemoan some offensive production from Brown after the halftime break, too, including a pair of free throws and a stadium-silencing dunk on a James feed. On the ensuing possession Brown returned the favor, dishing it over his defender’s head into James’ hands on a gorgeous low cut, handing Duke its largest lead to that point, 51-31.
“He’s so unselfish. I think he’s too unselfish at times,” Proctor said of Brown. “He’s such a good defender and allows us to get in transition a lot, but offensively, he’s just so unselfish, and I think when he starts looking to score more and looking at the rim, it draws out the defense to collapse in even more.”
It’s tough to call the final 10 minutes of a second half “garbage time,” but the Blue Devils were playing with house money come the last quarter of the game.
Proctor and Evans each found success from deep, Flagg threw down one of his statement dunks under heavy pressure and Scheyer unloaded the rotation, never letting his team’s lead slip below 20 points again. Syracuse found bursts of offensive success but couldn’t crack the Blue Devil defense as fast as its own was being cracked, allowing minutes to race by until the final whistle blared.
Duke continues with the orange-themed road trips this weekend, heading to Littlejohn Coliseum to face Clemson Saturday at 6:30 p.m.
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| Recruitment/Social Chair
Andrew Long is a Trinity senior and recruitment/social chair of The Chronicle’s 120th volume. He was previously sports editor for Volume 119.