Duke has 2 all-ACC players in Jones and Carey. To be best, it needs help from others
Duke’s two top players performed up to those descriptions and the Blue Devils won an intense basketball game on Saturday night.
With sophomore point guard Tre Jones producing 21 points and 11 assists while freshman center Vernon Carey handled things on the inside with 25 points and 10 rebounds, No. 12 Duke never trailed in beating rival North Carolina 89-76.
But this win at Cameron Indoor Stadium on the regular season’s final night was more than just two great players doing what they do best. This game showed how Duke hopes to roll through the rest of this month — and maybe beyond — to win the titles it sets its sights on each season.
It’s the production beyond Jones and Carey that makes Duke among the nation’s top teams.
Against UNC, Cassius Stanley scored 19 points and grabbed six rebounds.
Senior forward Justin Robinson, flourishing in a role anyone but him manned, scored 13 points with six rebounds and four blocked shots.
Having two great players like Jones and Carey is enough to handle some teams. But to win the games Duke wants to win in March, those two all-ACC candidates need help.
On Saturday night, that’s what they got and the Blue Devils (25-6, 15-5 ACC) head into the postseason feeling like they’ve found a groove.
“We were really good,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “We actually played better than what we practiced. When you play a really good team, they can take you to another level because in order to win, you have to go to another level.”
Beating N.C. State 88-69 last Monday and finishing off the regular season by dispatching UNC by a double-digit margin assuaged some of the doubts that began to surround the Blue Devils.
Duke had lost three of four games before stacking these two wins together. In losing 88-66 at N.C. State, 113-101 in double overtime at Wake Forest and 52-50 at Virginia, the Blue Devils played below average on offense all three nights.
Duke has the nation’s ninth-most efficient offense, according to KenPom.com. The Blue Devils score 1.157 points per possession.
Duke’s efficiency fell below that at N.C. State (0.87), Wake Forest (1.06) and Virginia (0.79).
Carey scored 27 while Jones had 17 in the loss to N.C. State. No other Duke player had more than seven points.
At Wake Forest, Carey had one of his poorest nights of offense this season by scoring 10 points in just 19 minutes in a foul-plagued game. Jones scored 24 points and Wendell Moore stepped up to score 25, but Duke’s mismanagement of the final minutes of regulation prevented it from securing the win in a game it controlled most of the second half.
At Virginia, Jones and Carey each scored 17 but Duke’s third-leading scorer was Javin DeLaurier with six points.
If Duke has a night like that in the ACC or NCAA tournaments, their stay in those events will likely come to an end.
Instead, the Blue Devils need games like last Monday, when Stanley scored 18 points to augment strong nights from Carey (17 points) and Jones (15).
Or like Saturday against the Tar Heels, when there were two Blue Devils in addition to Jones and Carey who scored 13 points or more.
“There was no way we were going to lose that game,” Stanley said after Duke completed the regular-season sweep of UNC. “We just came in here very confident. We prepared very well. We trusted our work and our preparation.”
Think back to Feb. 10 when the Blue Devils beat Florida State 70-65. Jones scored 13 points and Carey 10 in a defensive struggle. But Jordan Goldwire’s 13 points and 12 more from freshman Matthew Hurt allowed Duke to beat the team that eventually claimed the ACC’s regular-season title and the tournament’s No. 1 seed.
That’s the level of team Duke, as the No. 4 seed in Greensboro, figures to face in all three games should it advance.
After the opening round of the NCAA tournament, almost certainly to be in the same Greensboro Coliseum, Duke will need at least one other player scoring at a high level in addition to Jones and Carey to keep advancing.
We saw a glimpse of it on Saturday night. The Blue Devils hope to produce an eyeful regularly from this point forward.
This story was originally published March 7, 2020 at 10:10 PM with the headline "Duke has 2 all-ACC players in Jones and Carey. To be best, it needs help from others."