March Madness 2010: Teams Built To Beat the Duke Blue Devils

I’m taking some liberties here assuming Duke gets a No. 1 seed, I know.

I’m assuming Duke wins a couple games in the ACC Tournament and holds off West Virginia and Ohio State for the final one seed.

In all honesty, you can make a good case for all three of these teams garnering the final one seed, but give me the Blue Devils considering their resume and the fact they won their conference (along with Maryland).

For my money, winning the ACC, even in a down year, means the Duke Blue Devils are deserving of a prestigious national one seed and the main reason for their success is coaching.

Duke is lucky to have a coach flexible enough to adjust his system to his personnel, and quite frankly, there aren’t many of those coaches out there. Mike Krzyzewski may have learned a lot of his craft from Bobby Knight, but adapting a system to the players is a coaching skill Coach K acquired away from West Point.

Blue Devil Strengths

This one’s easy.

Take everything I wrote about in the Kentucky strength section and reverse it. The Blue Devils aren’t overly athletic nor particularly talented in the NBA sense of the term. Kyle Singler is big and skilled enough to catch on with a team in the Association, but it’s doubtful Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith have much in the way of a domestic professional career waiting for them outside of Durham.

What the Blue Devils do have in spades is experience, discipline, and interchangeable parts.

On offense they know who needs the ball, at the correct spot on the floor, in virtually every situation during a ball game. They don’t have a true point, they have three . Their motion, weak-side screening game, something Coach K has put more of an emphasis on this season, highlights the strength of having three interchangeable basketball players instead of defined positions like most clubs.

It allows the Devils to dictate matchups on the offensive end because opponents don’t know if they’re guarding the 1 guard or the small forward on any given possession.

Put your best on-ball defender on Nolan Smith, then the Blue Devils can isolate Scheyer on your weaker perimeter defender coming off a down-screen.

Try to smother or trap the Duke guards, and Kyle Singler is going to be handling the ball and working on your small forward. If your small forward is too small, or a glorified 3 guard, guess who’s posting you up or killing you on the glass?

Defensively is where Coach K actually made the biggest adjustment to his system this season after being sliced and diced by the explosive Villanova backcourt in the 2009 tournament.

Historically Duke has been a ball pressure, wing denial, man-to-man team. In 2009 and certainly going into the 2010 season, Duke lacked the requisite on-ball defending tip of the spear type player they’ve had in past in guys like Bobby Hurley and Jason Williams.

They also lacked the praying mantis-style athletes to get into passing lanes for wing denial. There wasn’t a Grant Hill, Thomas Hill, or Corey Maggette on this club to make life miserable for opponents looking for ball movement.

So Coach K adjusted and softened his perimeter pressure to create more of shell look on defense, which puts more of a premium on team-oriented help defense and lessens the need for supreme athletes to make spectacular individual plays.

The results have been strikingly successful.

Not only is Duke a stingier scoring defense, but the softened perimeter allows guards to stay in front, and allows their big people to stay in better position which has made the Devils a better rebounding team.

In addition, the shell look has protected the Devils from foul trouble, which is important considering this is the shortest bench Coach Krzyzewski has had in a while.

Blue Devil Weaknesses

The good new is that out of all the one seeds, the Blue Devils are the most experienced. The bad news is that they’re the least athletic in both the backcourt and frontcourt.

As patient and disciplined as Duke is on both ends of the floor, they have a tendency to struggle with superior athletes, especially athletic teams that play disciplined basketball.

How to Beat Duke

Teams are who they are, so if you’re not more athletic than Duke you’re not going to beat them unless you have an unconscious shooting night. You’re certainly not going to out-discipline them or out-execute them without having better athletes. And that’s the main reason that Duke has the lowest beta of any of the one seeds.

In fact, the day the brackets come out, you should be able to tell just how far the Blue Devils get based on their potential matchups.

Pit Coach K’s group up against some execution dependent teams with similar athletes like Butler, BYU, and Purdue, and the Devils will make a deep run. Put them up against a more athletic team that can be disciplined on defense or play zone to stop Duke’s motion game, and the Devils likely fall.

Offensively, the motion game only works if you free up weakside players with screens that create help and recover situations. If the defenders are disciplined enough to pull off solid help and recover rotations or they play an athletic zone to take away the screen game, then Duke’s in trouble.

For example, see Georgetown.

On the other end, teams that have multiple creators/slashers/scorers that can take advantage of a Duke team that doesn’t move its feet all that well for a one seed can really exploit the Blue Devil’s lack of elite quickness. Teams that can get into the lane against Duke can usually finish at the rim or draw fouls because Brian Zoubek and the Plumlee brothers aren’t true erasers on the back end.

So much of what Duke does on defense is predicated on their ability to maintain the integrity of the perimeter shell.

Teams Built to Beat Duke

Louisville

As a projected eight seed, and the best eight seed to boot, it’s entirely plausible that the Cardinals end up in Duke’s bracket.

A tilt with the Cardinals would be one of the worst possible second-round matchups for the Blue Devils, not only because Louisville is playing well, but they’re tailor-made to beat the Blue Devils.

Athletically, the Cardinals are a cut above Duke when it comes to the caliber of athlete.

Samardo Samuels and Jared Swopshire are physical frontcourt jumping jacks while Edgar Sosa and Preston Knowles can find gaps in the Blue Devil defense with their superb quickness.

More importantly, the Cardinals run a lot of zone which would take away Duke’s weakside screen game and force the Blue Devils to penetrate and kick to get open shots. Not a Blue Devil strong suit.

If I’m a Duke fan, I don’t want Coach Pitino’s squad anywhere near my bracket.

Georgetown

Superior athletic team. Check.

Disciplined on offense. Check.

Plays a credible zone. Check.

Out of all the potential Sweet Sixteen matchups for the Devils, the Hoyas are the most problematic. They have frontcourt athletes that are superior to Zoubek and Lance Thomas, and they’re used to playing a bunch of zone which would be effective in taking away Duke’s motion game.

Offensively, Georgetown’s open post offense would really exploit Duke’s problems staying in front of quick/slashing ballhandlers. Greg Monroe, Austin Freeman, and Chris Wright would have some success slashing to the goal which would expose Coach K’s short bench if anyone got in foul trouble.

If I’m a Duke fan, give me a second-round game against Notre Dame and a Sweet Sixteen matchup versus Gonzaga. These two clubs are right in the Blue Devil’s wheelhouse because they rely almost entirely on out-executing opponents. You can’t out-execute this Duke club.

Teams like Gonzaga and Notre Dame are batting practice fastballs for Coach K’s 2010 team of adjustments.

While Louisville and Georgetown are a Phil Niekro knuckleball.

Up next, One Seed and Two Seed Round Robin.

This article originally appeared on March To March

Follow Kevin Berger on Twitter: @MarchToMarch