Duke’s Win Over Florida State Was More Significant Than It Might Look At First Glance

There was a lot of good news here

As it turned out, Duke had a lot working against it Saturday versus Florida State.

First, Tyrese Proctor and Maliq Brown were both out and that hurt, especially on defense. And when Cooper Flagg left the game with a facial injury, things could have really gone south.

But they didn’t. Everyone had to shift roles to an extent and Duke still pulled away from the ‘Noles.

Isaiah Evans, who has been a machine gun off the bench, started cold. He still ended up the leading scorer with 19.

Kon Knueppel handled a lot of the point guard duties after Flagg went out. He didn’t have any turnovers (it didn’t help that fouls limited Sion James to 21 minutes).

Khaman Maluach finished with 14 points and 10 rebounds. Patrick Ngongba put in 15 minutes and had four points, three rebounds and a block - and he looks more and more confident.

Darren Harris was asked to step up and he played 17 minutes, with six points and four rebounds. He also played with much more intensity than we have seen before. For that matter, so did Evans, who was aggressive on defense and able to penetrate far better than he did earlier in the season, when he was solely a three-point specialist.

Mason Gillis has established that he can come in and do a variety of things, from hitting threes, passing well and defending bigger players when necessary. He’s a great glue guy.

It wasn’t a great game for Caleb Foster and he didn't build on his terrific recent performances, albeit in limited minutes. He's playing aggressively though and that’s a big plus.

The biggest thing we saw Saturday though was that this group trusts each other and sticks together. It made us think of the 2018-19 team and in two particular games where they didn't stay as close under duress.

Do you remember how well Duke was playing against Syracuse in Cameron before Tre Jones hurt his shoulder? It was astonishing. He was controlling Syracuse - the entire team - as a guard. We’ve honestly never seen anything like that. It gave some people chills to see a guard defend at that level.

And then when he went out, Duke couldn’t replace what he did and lost in overtime.

Later that season, when Zion mania peaked, everyone wanted to see the Duke-UNC game in Cameron. Even Barack Obama showed up - only to see Williamson infamously blow out his sneaker just :30 seconds into the game.

Not surprisingly, UNC won, 88-72.

You can’t compare this year’s Florida State team to the 2018-19 UNC team and possibly not to the Syracuse team of the same season.

But what you can talk about is how each team responded to adversity.

In 2018-19 when Duke lost key players, the team was staggered. This team has also seen two injuries, one to Maliq Brown, who is a superb resource off the bench, and the other toTyrese Proctor, who was injured at Miami.

You certainly can’t say that Duke is better without Proctor and Brown, and obviously if Flagg had been seriously hurt that would have been devastating.

However, what these injuries have revealed is that this team is deeply connected.

As great as it is to see that, there are still no guarantees. Duke had Proctor (though not Brown) at Wake Forest on January 25th and the game was close at 63-56.

If Duke wins Monday night’s rematch against Wake Forest, the Blue Devils will move to 18-1 in the ACC. Well guess what: Louisville and Clemson are close behind at 16-2. And the Tigers wrap up the regular season with games against Boston College and Virginia Tech while Louisville finishes up with Cal and Stanford at home.

There’s no reason to think any of those games should be losses.

And Duke?

After Wake Forest the Devils finish up in Chapel Hill, where the Tar Heels have improved a great deal since the first meeting.

In other words, Monday is a dangerous game because Duke may be tired and certainly won't have its full team available with a 48-hour turnaround and UNC is always a dangerous game.

Lose one and odds are Clemson will claim the regular season title and the first-place tiebreaker. Lose two and the #1 seed is at risk.