Duke Basketball: Can the Blue Devils Overcome Their Ball-Handling Blues?

Duke has nine wins and one loss in their first 10 games. A Maui Invitational Championship trophy sits somewhere in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

And, currently, the Blue Devils are ranked No. 5 in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll.

How could anyone find much to complain or criticize about a first month like this?

If we were talking about most any other program, we could stop the conversation here. But when you are a team that has conference and national championship aspirations like Duke, November and December wins are not the end of the story.

Coach K and his coaching staff are not satisfied with beginning of the season victories. They want the quality of play, regardless of their opponent, to be at a certain level.

One area that is surprising and could come back to bite the Blue Devils is how well they take care of the ball as a team.

A statistic that demonstrates both how well the ball is distributed and protected is assist-to-turnover ratio (A/TO).

A simple comparison of how many assists are handed out and how many turnovers are committed gives you that measurement.

After 10 games, Duke has a 0.97 A/TO, which means that they have slightly more turnovers per game (13.1) than they have assists per game (12.7).

This A/TO puts them at No. 135 in the nation, sandwiched between Cornell and Stanford. Not exactly the statistical company that you want to keep if you want to cut down the nets in the near future.

To compare: Ohio State, the only team to beat Duke this season, has a 1.61 A/TO, which ranks No. 5 in the nation; North Carolina has a 1.52 A/TO, putting them at No. 8; top-ranked Syracuse has a 1.45 A/TO, No. 13.

You obviously want the people who have the ball in their hands the most to be taking care of it the best.

In some cases, that is happening for the Blue Devils. Seth Curry has 33 assists and 24 turnovers on the season. Tyler Thornton has dropped 18 dimes while only coughing the ball up 11 times. Quinn Cook, in limited duty, has dished out 10 assists and committed four turnovers.

Based on this stat, the only one of this group that is doing a really good job of taking care of the ball is Cook (2.5 A/TO).

Unfortunately, Austin Rivers is only 1:1. He has turned the ball over as many times (23) as he has set up a teammate to score (23).

It also doesn't help that the Blue Devil Bigs are giving the ball back to the opponent too regularly. For interior players, you would like those numbers to be no worse than even. All of Duke's post players are committing more turnovers than they are creating assists.

Mason Plumlee leads the team in turnovers (26) while only handing out 19 assists. Ryan Kelly is 11/16 A/TO. MP1 is 4/12.

Duke's talent level will carry them to victory after victory against most of the teams on their schedule. When all of this will come into play is in close games against good teams.

The sky is not falling. The end is not near.

But unless Coach K sees some improvement here, how Duke takes care of the ball will impact the outcome of some important games.