Duke’s 82-75 win over SMU was not a work of art by any means, but it was notable for one thing in particular, and that was Dame Sarr’s first half defense, which was magnificent.
Sarr put on a defensive performance in that half which was as fine as any we’ve seen since Tre Young personally destroyed Syracuse in 2020 before leaving the game with a shoulder injury.
It even brought back memories of the brilliant defense of Billy King in the late 1980’s. King was a superb athlete but he could not hit the broad
side of a barn on offense, sometimes struggling to hit layups.
On defense though he was an absolute demon, and that’s what Sarr was in the first half Saturday, and a good thing, too, because Duke really needed that.
The Blue Devils fell behind early to an SMU team that, we must say, was impressive, even without star guard Boopie Miller, who was listed as questionable with an undisclosed illness.
SMU started hot out of the gate, going up 11-0 before Duke scored.
The Blue Devils were hurt by three early turnovers, all by Cameron Boozer.
But a slow start is not a surprise for this team, not at this point in the season, and as they typically do, they fought their way back into the game.
Duke cut the lead to 15-14 13:09 in when Patrick Ngongba tipped a miss in and after that, it didn’t take long for the Blue Devils to take control of the game.
Duke went up 23-17 on a Maliq Brown pass to Ngongba for an alley-oop and ultimately built a double-digit lead.
The thing is that while Maliq Brown defended at a high level, other than Sarr’s magnificent first half, Duke was not able to defend SMU as effectively as Jon Scheyer would have preferred.
The Mustangs shot 50% on threes and 57% overall for the game. Duke had two big advantages in this game: first, although they didn’t fully take advantage of them, the Blue Devils forced 21 turnovers but scored just 21 points off of them. And second, Duke had a considerable advantage at the line, outscoring SMU 21-8 from the charity stripe.
Despite building a double-digit lead, Duke was never far enough ahead to have a sense of inevitability and SMU was skilled enough to stay close behind the Devils. In fact, SMU was down just three at 73-70 when Isaiah Evans hit a clutch three to put Duke up 76-70 with 1:15 to play.
BJ Edwards came back and attempted a two in the lane and Caleb Foster emerged from the scrum with the rebound, and that nearly closed the door on the ponies.
Boozer stepped to the line and converted his free throws to put Duke up 78-73 then SMU’s Corey Washington hit a big three to cut the lead back to 5 at 78-73. Evans went back to the line and hit both to put Duke up 80-73 ,then Edwards drove the lane and tried a tomahawk jam which missed, which apparently infuriated Enfield. Evans got the rebound, got fouled by Edward, then got the fouls shots and Edwards got the hook with :09 left to play.
Finally, Jaron Pierre hit a dunk at the end to make the final score 82-75.
We mentioned SMU’s turnovers so it’s only fair to assume that without their lead guard, turnovers were probably going to be higher. It’s just how things work out sometimes.
We’ve talked a bit about SMU freshman Jaden Toombs, who was just superb for Andy Enfield. He shot 10-12/2-2 and had 6 boards. That kid is really promising. We’ll give this to SMU for free: start calling Moody Coliseum The Temple Of Toombs.
Just give us credit!
Edwards was also very good with 20 points on 8-14/2-4.
What we liked about SMU is that if you take away the turnovers, they played very well on offense. They’re patient and smart and they worked for shots they could get. And Enfield has put together some excellent shotmakers. We didn’t get to watch them play UNC the other night but you can kind of see how it happened. This is a team that will do some damage this year.
Samet Yigitoglu is huge at 7-2 and 270, but he’s also gawky and heavy-footed. He’s not really a guy you can rely on for a lot, frankly, other than size and muscle.
However, if SMU opted to go with Toombs inside and surrounded him with the quick, athletic players Enfield has assembled, most of whom are smart and skilled and bring Yigitoglu off the bench, you might really have something special.
Notes – Evans will keep getting paid to play basketball because he has a golden arm, but his ballhandling needs some work…Ngongba took it right at Yigitoglu on several occasions, not backing down from the massive Turk…At one point in the first half we looked up and realized, about 11-12 minutes in that this was the first time this year we could remember Cayden outscoring brother Cameron…it didn’t last but Cameron finished with 18 while Cayden had 12…after his terrific game at Louisville, Caleb Foster was shut out here…Next up is the West Coast swing which will see Duke play at 11:00 pm Eastern at Cal on Wednesday…
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