PORTLAND, Ore. — There is no singular sequence to point to, no one pivotal play that inverted a would-be win.
No last-second miss. No blown coverage at the buzzer.
In a way, that might’ve been easier for Duke — its players, coaches, fans — to swallow. But this was not that. A 75-56 loss to Purdue on Sunday in the Phil Knight Legacy championship game, as the score shows, is more sweeping. More across-the-board. More of a message, certainly, about where this team is … and more specifically, where it isn’t.
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“Obviously,” coach Jon Scheyer said postgame, “it got away from us at the end.”
And that, if you had to harp on one run, is the exact right place to start. After a Tyrese Proctor layup with 9:14 to play cut Duke’s deficit to a manageable seven points, guess when the Blue Devils got their next basket?
Never.
“You know, we were there,” freshman forward Kyle Filipowski said, “and I think we started getting a little careless again, like we did with Kansas, and rushing ourselves too much.”
It didn’t help that after Proctor’s layup, Purdue recorded eight of its 14 offensive rebounds; all those extended possessions and second-chance points, like a boa constrictor, choked out any chance of a real Duke comeback. But even had the Boilermakers not bested the Blue Devils on the glass, Duke wasn’t making life easy on itself. Proctor’s layup was also the team’s last layup attempt of the game — a testament to how jumper-happy Scheyer’s squad was late.
And for a team making just 29.1 percent of its 3s — No. 303 nationally, per KenPom — that isn’t a recipe for success.
“They just got better shots than us down the stretch,” Scheyer said. “The offensive rebounds, that’s been something we’ve done, really, better than anybody all season — and they had more than us today.”
But that’s the truth of Sunday’s loss in the championship game of the Phil Knight Legacy tournament: It wasn’t any one thing that doomed Duke. It was multiple. The late misses, yes, but also being out-rebounded for the first time all season (42 to 31) … and only scoring three second-chance points … and man-to-man defensive mishaps that allowed Purdue to shoot 57.7 percent in the first half, en route to a healthy 11-point lead at intermission. This is not to say that Duke did nothing well. Its 14-7 start — when it forced five Boilermaker turnovers in the first four minutes and converted them into eight points — was encouraging, as was a second-half stretch of 2-3 zone that resulted in 10 empty possessions out of 12 for Purdue. “We’ve had it in our back pocket just in case,” Scheyer said of the zone, “and I thought our guys did a good job on the fly to pick it up.” The 2-3 threw Purdue out of whack offensively, making it difficult for Matt Painter’s team to complete post entries to its best player, junior center and certified mountain Zach Edey.
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But by and large, those silver linings are things you have to search for.
Because while Purdue didn’t pummel Duke for a full 40 minutes, that doesn’t mean this was ever a fair fight.
The 7-foot-4 Edey — currently first in KenPom’s player of the year rankings, by virtue of his 21.8 points and 12 rebounds per game — was always going to be a force. Duke freshman Dereck Lively II forced two turnovers on Purdue’s first two post-entry passes, but eventually the Boilermakers big man won out. He drew an absurd eight fouls, splitting them semi-equally amongst Duke’s trio of bigs and forcing Scheyer to constantly shuffle his rotation. Lively, who finished with five rebounds and two blocks (but no points), called that dynamic “challenging,” and it made a dramatic impact on how aggressive Duke could be otherwise. Heck, at one point late in the first half, Scheyer even briefly subbed in freshman Christian Reeves, just to buy his other bodies a few foul-free minutes on the bench. Reeves had played a total of 12 minutes in Duke’s first seven games.
The problem with Purdue, though, isn’t just Edey. It’s Painter’s system — Edey as the sun, surrounded by sharpshooting, extra-pass-making role players — which emphasizes sharing the basketball, shoveling it all around the floor until the best opening appears. It’s a pick-your-poison dynamic, as Scheyer explained postgame: Do you double, or not? Don’t, and it’s death by a thousand Edey hook shots, that same right hand over left shoulder over and over again. Or, do, and risk not being able to run out on Purdue’s other players from 3.
“We were ready to live with some of his buckets,” Scheyer said. “We knew he was gonna score some — but we gave up 3s and that, and that really hurt.”
Duke, at present, does not have that dominant inside presence … but it also does not have 3-point marksmen posting up around the arc.
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It must win collectively, then, with defense and diving for loose balls and sharing the basketball.
Not eight assists on 21 made baskets. Not allowing Purdue to out-offensive rebound the best offensive rebounding team in men’s college basketball coming into Sunday. Not the team’s top two big men, a pair of top-5 recruits, fouling out in the span of four seconds.
“They just out-toughed us,” Filipowski said, “for most of the game.”
Admittedly, it did not help matters that arguably Duke’s toughest player, junior guard Jeremy Roach, was in and out of the lineup after suffering a toe injury on his right foot late in the first half. Roach, after running back across midcourt for a deflected ball, seemed to come up limping, before finally crumbling to the floor and coming out 3:38 before halftime. He walked off the floor under his own power, got checked out by trainer Jose Fonseca, and then attempted to come back in with about two minutes left.
He lasted 64 seconds, before getting tangled up with Trey Kaufman-Renn and tumbling back down to the floor. This time, when he got up and left the game, he went straight down the tunnel to Duke’s locker room.
Somehow, Roach came back again to start the second half — and he still played the most minutes of anyone on the team, 37 of a possible 40.
“I didn’t have any doubts about Jeremy’s toughness; I knew if he could go, he’d go in,” Scheyer said. “He definitely hurt his toe there, and (we) need to evaluate him and figure out where to go from here.”
He meant that about his star point guard, but it probably applies just as well to the whole roster. Duke fights hard, plays with intensity. Sometimes, though, it still slumps — usually, offensively. And while defensive fortitude was well and fine late against Oregon State and Xavier this weekend, Purdue’s in another class.
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Sunday’s defeat was clear evidence of the chasm between the two teams right now.
“When you play other really good teams, they’re gonna throw some punches at you, and how do you handle those critical moments in the game?” Scheyer said. “That’s for us to learn, and figure out how to handle that better.”
(Photo: Troy Wayrynen / USA Today)