So how was your Saturday? If you’re a Duke fan (and that seems like a reasonable bet since you’re here), it was probably pretty good.
Duke won at Michigan State (again) and Saturday evening, beat Virginia in overtime to win the 2025 ACC Football Championship.
The interception by Luke Mergott when Virginia tried to run a trick play was the perfect cap. Duke came into the title game at a modest 7-5 but are they playing high-level football? Yes they are.
As it turns out, it wasn’t enough to make the playoffs,
but Duke did something Saturday they haven’t done since 1962: the Blue Devils are the outright ACC champions. It’s a huge accomplishment.
Duke has developed a solid football culture and even better, it’s been sustained under three very different coaches. And this is true too: only a handful of Power Conference teams have won at least 8 games over the last four years. Duke is one of them.
Okay, back to Michigan State.
This was an important game in a lot of ways. Obviously Duke is 10-0 and has proven a lot of people wrong by rolling through a very tough schedule.
Duke, as Matt Norlander points out, has the best resume in the country and, many people think, again has the best player in the country. Last year it was Cooper Flagg; this year, it looks like Cameron Boozer.
But in the first 20 minutes, Michigan State shut down Duke’s young star – and his teammates picked up the slack.
Despite Boozer scoring just two points in the first half, Duke was down just 34-31 at the break.
Michigan State, always a tough defensive team, threw a blanket over Duke’s young star in the first half. But in the second, as we have seen more than once, Boozer found ways around the defense.
There has been a theme this season that he struggles against more athletic defenders. Well, not so much.
Boozer maybe doesn’t jump as high or run as fast as some of his opponents, but he has some things that will take you far in this game. First, he has absolutely impeccable fundamentals. Watch him when he gets a pass near the basket up high. We’ve only once seen him bring it down, and that was to dribble into a more advantageous position. When he gets a rebound, usually with both hands, if it’s on offense, again, he doesn’t bring it down. And when he gets a defensive rebound, typically with both hands, he switches immediately into outlet mode – and usually he makes that pass with both hands, too. And his footwork at times is mesmerizing.
We haven’t watched as closely on defense, but remember that reaching foul he picked up? That was almost shocking because Boozer is insanely disciplined. He doesn’t do that sort of thing, so it came across as a big surprise. He fouled out at Michigan State obviously but prior to that, Boozer never drew more than two fouls in a game.
Still, when Michigan State had him under control, his teammates came through, and that’s great. Even the greatest player can’t carry a team by himself, as Detroit proved with the Jordan Rules before Phil Jackson countered that with the Triangle offense.
And really, that’s the biggest thing to come out of this game. We’re seeing immense improvement from Caleb Foster, Patrick Ngongba, Isaiah Evans and Nik Khamenia.
Foster has really been through the fire at Duke and he has emerged as a steady and reliable guard and, as we saw at Michigan State, a guy who can step up in the clutch.
We also really love the improvement out of Isaiah Evans. He’s been in a bit of a slump from outside, ostensibly his calling card, since the Niagara game. Against Howard, Evans was 1-5 from behind the line. Against Arkansas? 3-9. Florida? 1-8. And Michigan State? 2-6.
Last year, this would have had him on the bench. But he’s a different player now. He’s contributing as a rebounder and against Florida, he had a shocking 5 blocks. Overall, he’s a much better defender. Our guess is that he’s grading out as one of the better defenders on the team.
There’s the level that we see as fans and then there’s the level the professionals see. We’d love to see what the staff says about his defensive improvement and see what they spot on film.
Ngongba…we have consistently underestimated him. We thought last year, maybe he’d redshirt. Fortunately, that didn’t happen and he has emerged as a guy who can score, rebound, defend and pass.
Which brings us to Khamenia.
He’s competed with Dame Sarr for the fifth starting spot and right now, Khamenia is winning that. In Lausanne this summer with Team USA, he was passing the ball beautifully and we’re starting to see that now at Duke. He made a couple in East Lansing that, somewhat like Ngongba last spring, you wanted to rewind to make sure you saw what you thought you saw.
His three pointer is becoming more and more reliable and he has a hardass attitude that you hope is infectious. He works hard.
What we want to see is Khamenia get more comfortable and that seems to be happening. Remember in the first couple of games how he was hesitant inside and got pushed around a bit? That’s not really happening anymore.
He’s become a big asset. What we are waiting for is when Boozer, Ngongba and Khamenia are fully incorporated and the ball is moving the way we think it can because all three of those guys are high-level passers, and Maliq Brown isn’t far behind, if at all.
That’s going to change things. The beauty of passing is that the ball moves faster than feet and you can throw a defense seriously off balance if you pass well. And then you can exploit three point shooting and penetration.
Getting back to the glory era of the Bulls, Jordan didn’t become a champion until Scottie Pippen and others arrived and the Triangle gave him space to operate.
We’re not comparing Duke to the Chicago Bulls, but the principle is the same. If things go well, Duke’s front line could be the best passing group since the 1978 lineup of Mike Gminski, Gene Banks and Kenny Dennard. And that team’s passing is a very high standard to meet. Passing (and defense) is the key for this team’s ceiling.
Go to the DBR Boards to find Blue Healer Auctions | Drop us a line
