NEW YORK — It was an ugly day inside the Garden.
The fours teams involved looked like I did after my massive meal yesterday. There was a lot of sloppy play, uneven tempo and a collective “come ON” feeling in both games. Duke won despite shooting 29 percent from the field. UConn allowed the Blue Devils to rack up 25 offensive boards. After a freakishly fast start, Duke adjusted its game plan, relied on its bigs to play for broke and the plan paid off.
But was it an impressive win? A high-profile win, but it didn’t look good. Brian Zoubek needs to learn to play with better feet. If the Blue Devils can play with a true sense of dominance on the interior a month down the road, they might be scary. Zoubek is a BIG dude. Lance Thomas, Miles Plumlee and Singler can also have a presence.
But it the small guy — Jon Scheyer, who won the NIT tournament MVP — that Krzyzewski said was “the most important player” on the team in the postgame presser. Did you know Scheyer only has four turnovers all season so far? Who would have guessed. I won’t say the team will go as Scheyer goes (I think even Krzyzewski would admit that’s not the case), but he handled himself so well against Kemba Walker and Jerome Dyson.
On the lighter side of things, Coach K ribbed Doug Gottlieb after a reporter brought up that Gottlieb called the Blue Devils unathletic during the halftime show of the Arizona State-Duke game. When asked what his response to Gottlieb’s claims were, Krzyzewski said this:
“He should be an expert on alarmingly non-athletic,” Krzyzewski said. ” … And I would rather not get into a discussion with Doug because I have respect of his stature and he should have his arguments with people of similar stature. That would be a good thing.”
Now, let’s address UConn. For all the positive pub the Big East has received so far this year, UConn laid a gigantic egg in the conference’s most high-profile game of the early part of this season.
When was the last time this team was handled so physically? The last time it didn’t make a 3? That happened tonight. And Jerome Dyson, you are no A.J. Price. But the head coach doesn’t think that was an issue.
“Jerome Dyson was not a problem tonight, certainly,” Calhoun said.
Yeah … not a problem for Duke. It’s so soon into this year, and I refuse to knee-jerk, but don’t you get the feeling Dyson will struggle all season long?
“Mainly, quite frankly, guys that were open never got the ball,” Calhoun added.
And there it is. There is no true 1 on this team. No pure distributor. The Huskies are frighteningly athletic up close, but where’s the cogency? In about six different ways, Connecticut did not play like a top-25 team tonight. It was giddy at the get-go, but when Duke decided on a tempo the boys in blue no longer played with a five-as-one mentality.
Free throws killed the Huskies. Missed layups killed the Huskies. A soft interior killed the Huskies. Lazy arms killed the Huskies. It’s going to be a quiet, lonely ride back up to Storrs tonight.
Nolan Smith, who banged his head on the floor in second half, was his usual, affable self in the Twitterverse.
Got a good win tonight, no time to celebrate! Its not march! Ok ok celebrate a little bit! But tommorow we keep it movin! Ya dig!
Arizona State 71, LSU 52
Arizona State, who carried the torch for the Pac-10 in New York in the wake of UCLA’s loss to an underrated Portland team last night, handled LSU in the second half to cruise to a victory. The Tigers were playing without Bo Spencer, who was suffering an ankle injury that occurred in the UConn game. You never want to say one player would make the difference in a 19-point loss, but the Tigers led by seven at the break. I didn’t even realize the Tigers were outscored 44-18 in the second half until I began to write this piece.
Herb Sendek and his team get a 1-1 record on the East-Coast road trip. Derek Glass completely dissed the Garden when I asked him about playing in Manhattan.
“Our conference tournament is in the Staples Center,” he said. “I think playing in that arena, and normally we play games in the U.S. Airways, where the Suns play. … I think Staples is a little nicer than Madison, that’s for sure.”
Glasser added that playing Duke was a good barometer for the team “just to see” where they were at.
Trent Johnson, a no-nonsense kind of coach, said Spencer tried to play at the beginning of warmups, but the ankle wasn’t strong enough.
“He wasn’t very happy with the coaches’ decision,” Johnson said. “I’m more concerned about the team and his future. I’m not going to play — I’m not going to put a kid in jeopardy by injuries and playing him.”
Smart move, certainly.
Let’s do some one-sentence assessments of the four teams and look ahead to the weekend.
Arizona State: A tough team to scout because you don’t know where the points can come from.
LSU: Looks like there will be a lot of tough losses if the team can’t go 40 minutes strong.
Duke: Its size is for real and could be scary if the bigs learn how to own the paint.
UConn: Needs consistency at the point or it will lose at least eight games this season.
