Duke may or may not finally be trending up, but NC State’s definitely spiraling down
Duke may or may not be back. Who knows at this point? Teams go up. Teams go down. Anyone, in this aberrant season, can win by 30 or lose by 30 on any given night. Trying to figure any of this out is a fool’s game.
Maybe Duke’s trajectory is finally tiling upward after three straight losses that were as narrow as they were demoralizing. Only time will tell. This much is certain: N.C. State is spiraling down, and the end can’t come soon enough for the Wolfpack.
In its fifth game without Devon Daniels, N.C. State hasn’t gotten any closer to figuring things out. Kevin Keatts has tried to pivot on the fly to a team that feeds the post but it isn’t working, and it’s not like there are a plethora of other options. Duke won 69-53, and the best thing anyone can say for State is with 18 turnovers it probably should have been worse.
“We stink right now in that area,” Wolfpack coach Kevin Keatts said.
Because of the circumstances -- the irregular practice schedules and COVID interruptions, the empty buildings and distanced benches -- we’ve had more than our share of forgettable basketball games this season. It has not been the finest of winters for the product of college basketball, with the obvious caveat that even this is better than nothing for players and fans.
But this game was the apex of the trend: two teams with a foot already in next season, one farther along that curve in a rare down year, the other absent its best player in a once-promising season gone awry. These are not conditions that gestate an instant classic.
The last time Duke won in this building, the building was just as empty at the governor’s behest, only a different governor and for different reasons. In the aftermath of a January 2016 snowstorm that locked down the Triangle, Pat McCrory asked fans to stay home. By and large they did, and Duke won by 10. Saturday, what feels like a million years later, a few dozen parents were allowed in to watch Duke win by 16. Krzyzewski suggested that may even have helped Duke, and freshman big man Mark Williams in particular.
“Maybe it’s because his parents are here,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “You guys don’t realize how tough that is. We don’t have any fans at our place. I’m not against Duke for doing it. But who knows, that might have helped, too.”
They all watched N.C. State -- with a couple players recovering from a stomach virus that went through the team and Braxton Beverly slowed by back spasms -- play one of the worst first halves of basketball ever perpetrated on this floor, and you have to say “one of” because we’re not all that far removed from the historically bad Virginia Tech debacle, when the Wolfpack scored 14 points in the first half two years ago.
N.C. State got to 21 on Saturday, managing to record more points than turnovers, but not by much. Duke scored 16 points off the Wolfpack’s 13 turnovers in the first half and another 23 by conventional means. It could have been 14: At one point, freshman guard Cam Hayes tripped over his feet, but managed to recover.
“We had a lot of issues tonight, too many turnovers that led to easy points,” Wolfpack forward Manny Bates said. “That’s the bottom line.”
The Wolfpack has six games and a Greensboro cameo left, assuming things go as planned and they rarely have. During the first half of this game, the ACC pulled the plug on Tuesday’s North Carolina-Virginia Tech game because of a positive test among the Hokies. The big wheel keeps on turning.
As tough as this was for the Wolfpack, it was exactly what Duke needed, looking for momentum that would lead to a season-prolonging upset run in Greensboro. Matthew Hurt finished with a game-high 24 despite some first-half foul trouble, not that it slowed Duke down any.
After the losses to Miami, North Carolina and Notre Dame by a total of 10 points, each demoralizing in its own way, the Blue Devils started hot and stayed hot. They need to keep it up to keep hope alive.
“Stay with it, man,” Krzyzewski said. “That’s what our program’s done. And see what happens. Just see what happens if you do that.”
Yes, N.C. State offered little resistance, but Duke never gave the Wolfpack any hope, either. In some ways, that’s what this season is about, finding the weak spots in the schedule and making the most of them, while trying to have as few as possible of your own. Sometimes, that’s entirely out of your control, when it comes to positive tests and quarantines and injuries. But you also have to take advantage of what’s given, and Duke did that Saturday. Plenty was given.
