Duke basketball at Arkansas (Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports)
Jon Scheyer: Poor Duke Basketball Shooting 'Affected Our Defense'
It was the case when Duke basketball faced a confounding 35-31 halftime deficit at home to Southern Indiana in the now-No. 7 Blue Devils' eventual 80-62 Blue Devil Challenge victory on Friday night. Jon Scheyer's players let their poor shooting early take away from their aggression as defenders.
That was again the case in Duke's 80-75 road loss to unranked Arkansas on Wednesday night in the ACC/SEC Challenge. The Blue Devils were cold in the first half. And the shooting didn't improve in the second half. The squad finished 24-for-67 (35.8 percent) from the field and 6-for-22 (27.3 percent) beyond the arc.
As Scheyer explained during his press conference afterward, all those misses again impacted his group in more ways than one:
"There's just a resistance you have to have [on defense]. We have a lot of guys...capable of having big nights offensively and scoring. But whether shots are going in or not, you have to be the same way all the time on [the defensive end].
"And I thought our offense right away affected our defense. So, the resistance on the ball, our second-level defense, our protection coming over on the weak side, it wasn't there for us to the level that it needs to be. Bottom line.
"There's some plays as you look throughout. Just a couple of the loose balls. They outrebounded us by six. They only had five offensive rebounds, but I thought there were a couple of key ones there in the first half...It led to [Duke basketball star Kyle Filipowski's] second foul [five minutes into the game].
"Those plays are big."
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