Duke Basketball: Great Guard Play vs. Virginia Exactly What Blue Devils Needed

In the time it took you to read this sentence, the Duke backcourt drained another three-pointer against Virginia’s vaunted defense.

The Blue Devils completed a dramatic late comeback on the road against the previously undefeated Cavaliers to win 69-63 with a mixture of timely stops and critical three-pointers. In fact, Duke drilled four shots from downtown in the final four minutes of the game, while Quinn Cook hit three shots from distance in the last 4:38.

A nine-point Virginia lead suddenly turned into a Duke victory before the crowd even knew what happened.

Ryan M. Kelly/Associated Press

The most impressive part of the Blue Devils’ win was the performance of Cook and Tyus Jones in the backcourt, especially after fellow guard Rasheed Sulaimon was dismissed from the program earlier this week.

Jones finished with 17 points, four assists and four rebounds and drilled the three-pointer that put Duke up six with 10 seconds remaining. Not to be outdone, Cook scored 15 points and hit three of his four three-point attempts, including the most important shot of the game that put the Blue Devils up 66-63 in the final minutes.

That shot completed the gutsy comeback and put Duke over the top for yet another impressive win. Chad Lykins of 247Sports pointed out that it was business as usual for the Blue Devils on the road:

While those three-point shots will make the headlines in the aftermath of the critical win, perhaps the biggest reason Duke won is the fact that Jones and Cook combined for a whopping two turnovers. The Cavaliers thrive off forcing mistakes from the opposing offenses, and Duke’s backcourt avoided those crippling errors all game long.

Duke was missing those types of clutch performances from the guards last year when Jabari Parker and Rodney Hood dominated the ball in the final minutes of close games. When Parker and Hood struggled, Duke struggled, so it is encouraging for Blue Devils fans that the guards can pick up the slack this season if superstar Jahlil Okafor doesn’t light up the scoreboard on a given night.

The only chance the Blue Devils have to be a Final Four team is to rely on more players than just Okafor down low, and both Jones and Cook proved Saturday that they can handle the critical shots in the final minutes.

Saturday’s performance also takes on more importance because Duke will be without Sulaimon for the rest of the season.

Lance King/Getty Images

Jones played 38 minutes and Cook played 36 minutes, so they should get used to a heavy workload against the top-caliber teams on the schedule. Fortunately for Duke, they both handled it well, especially in a physically grinding game on the road against the Virginia defense. 

There is also something to be said for playing this effectively in one of the most difficult venues in all of college basketball after the emotion of the Sulaimon dismissal. Coach Mike Krzyzewski suggested as much in his postgame quote, via Duke Basketball:

Rather than sulk about the loss of the backcourt depth and worry about the tenacious Virginia defense, Jones and Cook combined for an incredible effort and put Duke back into the thick of the ACC race.

Seth Davis of Sports Illustrated was very impressed, while Peter Bukowski of Sports Illustrated described the defense that Duke knocked off:

If Cook and Jones can play like they did against the Cavaliers, one would have to figure that they can put up impressive numbers against less suffocating defenses, including the ones they'll face in the NCAA tournament.

The Blue Devils have the other pieces to contend for a Final Four with Okafor down low and Justise Winslow as a lockdown defender on the wing, so they are going to need consistent play from the backcourt the rest of the season. 

Lance King/Getty Images

If there is a concern with the Jones-and-Cook combination, especially since they will be playing more minutes the rest of the year, it is on the defensive side of the ball. Sulaimon was arguably Duke’s best backcourt defender, while the rest of the guards struggled to stop anything against Notre Dame.

On January 28, Jerian Grant went off against Duke for 23 points, 12 assists and six rebounds and controlled the pace of the entire game. We saw much of the same thing in the early going against Virginia, but Krzyzewski switched up the defenses in the final eight minutes, as Sam Vecenie of CBS Sports noted:

"

Coach K deserves some credit for mixing and matching defenses. Giving a whole lot of different looks.

— Sam Vecenie (@Sam_Vecenie) February 1, 2015"

The zone look Duke used in the second half will be critical going forward because it helps cover up the team's man-to-man weakness in the backcourt. Krzyzewski has won more than 1,000 games for a reason, and he will likely institute the zone more moving forward without Sulaimon.

Lance King/Getty Images

It is all about confidence for young players like Jones, and the zone will help his self-belief on the offensive side because he has less to worry about on defense. 

Of course, if Duke fans are treated to the same types of performances they saw from the guards Saturday, confidence will not be an issue for anyone the rest of the year.

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