Duke will face TCU in round two of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday, and it won’t be an easy win.
Of course, neither was Siena, but the two teams shouldn’t be confused.
Siena significantly outplayed the Blue Devils in the first half of that game, but in the second, we saw the Blue Devils mostly return to form.
At halftime, Coach Jon Scheyer told his team that they made the classic mistake of assuming they had an easy win, but as Cameron Boozer said after the game, Siena punched them in the face.
The odds
of them making that mistake twice in a row are minimal, and no one is going to confuse a #9 seed with a #16 seed. There will be no complacency.
TCU is a very physical team, as you’d expect from a Jamie Dixon team, but it’s not that deep and some of the players are strong, but they’re not that tall. However, David Punch, while just 6-7, is 245, and Micah Robinson is 6-6 and 232.
The third frontcourt starter is Xavier Edmonds, and he fits the template at 6-8 and 245 pounds.
The immediate concern is fouls, because those guys are a ground-and-pound frontcourt.
The starting guards are smallish, with Brock Harding and Jayden Pierre both 6-0.
Against Ohio State, Edmonds and Punch scored 16, while Robinson had 18. Edmonds had 8 boards, while Punch had 13 and Robinson 5.
Robinson also hit 5 of TCU’s 14 threes.
TCU also controlled the boards in this one, 38-32 overall, and 12-6 offensively.
Ohio State was not great defensively in this one, and they also didn’t attack well inside.
We would expect Duke to get the ball into Boozer, because we’ve learned that if he can’t get a shot off, he can really draw fouls, and that seems like a good way to attack this team.
You’d think, given what Dame Sarr has done to smaller point guards this season, that Scheyer might sic him on Harding, who averages 5.6 assists.
Keep in mind, too, that while TCU shot 9-23 on threes, this is not normally a three-point-oriented team. Their preference, as you’d expect from Dixon, is to go inside-out.
Given what Isaiah Evans said about taking responsibility for the first half against Siena, we’d expect him to come out particularly focused, and if he gets hot from outside or anyone else does, it’s a bad sign for TCU. That will limit their ability to focus on Boozer.
By the way, isn’t it wild that he still has those scratches from the NC State game? Those are not normal scratches. They’re more or less tattoos now.
In general, we’d hope to see a more determined Duke team, one that is really focused on not making the same mistake they made against Siena. TCU should have their full attention.
There’s no way of knowing if he’s ready, of course, but getting Pat Ngongba back from injury would be a massive boon. He would add to Duke’s size advantage, he’d help on the boards and with interior defense, and he would give Duke some extra margin with fouls inside.
That’s really important, because we expect TCU to try to beat the crap out of Duke and to draw as many fouls as possible.
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