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Coach K: This Was a Game of Knowing Personnel

Duke freshmen were scouted well by Georgia State, while Blue Devils made mistakes on Panthers shooters

Duke’s struggles with Georgia State might have had something to do with the Panthers’ knowledge of the Blue Devil freshmen.

With three games of tape, Georgia State did a good job on several of Duke’s first-year players. Cassius Stanley, who had hit 81 percent of his shots, most of any freshman in the nation, hit just 2 of his 12 shots on Friday and was blocked four times. Wendell Moore was 1-for-5 and had two turnovers. Matthew Hurt was 2-for-7.

“A big thing is scouting,” Mike Krzyzewski said. “This was a game not of knowing plays that the opponents do. This was a game of knowing personnel.”

The experienced Panthers made it tough for Duke to run its offense.

“There were a lot of frustrating things,” Krzyzewski said. “And when we say that our offense was [poor], let’s give credit to them, you know, they’re coming after you, they have great quickness, intensity – when I say rat, that’s a compliment – they rat on balls. They’re strong, you have to be strong on the ball, so one of the reasons we missed was because of them, and that’s really probably the main reason.”

Duke didn’t do as good a job of knowing the Georgia State personnel, Krzyzewski said.

“We left the corner [open] five times in the first half,” he said, “and so, when there are certain guys—when No. 1 [Damon Wilson] is in the corner, you can’t let him shoot, because that’s his shot, and we let him shoot a couple times. When you’re not completely into what you’re doing, you make mistakes, and so we made some mistakes on three-point shooters, and in the second half we didn’t.”