Duke basketball: Jon Scheyer steers clear of common excuse

Expect a hungrier start in Duke basketball's next Phil Knight Legacy clash.

Duke basketball head coach Jon Scheyer (Troy Wayrynen-USA TODAY Sports)

Sometimes, a win feels more like a loss. That was the case on Thanksgiving as the Duke basketball squad escaped the first round of the Phil Knight Legacy tournament in Portland, Ore., with a 54-51 victory over the giant underdog Oregon State Beavers (3-2, 0-0 Pac-12), a program that went 3-28 last season.

The No. 8 Blue Devils (5-1, 0-0 ACC) shot 26.7 percent from the field (16-for-60), including a hard-to-watch 5-for-29 clip from downtown, equating to Duke's lowest field goal percentage in a winning effort — ever.

If not for the free throw shooting (17-for-21), rebounding edge (45-29), and refuse-to-lose mentality of freshman power forward Kyle Filipowski (19 points, 14 boards) and graduate big man Ryan Young (11 points, 15 boards), Jon Scheyer would have been answering questions about one of the program's all-time most disappointing losses.

Every bucket from the win over Oregon State.....

Buckets were hard to come by. Hoping for a longer video next time. pic.twitter.com/UdMIvxB86n

— Duke Men’s Basketball (@DukeMBB) November 25, 2022

So it's understandable that the 35-year-old first-year head coach sounded less than ecstatic about the Blue Devils' effort when speaking to the media after the game. Admirably, though, Scheyer didn't point fingers at his group's youth, a common excuse in Duke basketball's modern era of one-and-done rosters.

"You know, I don't want to put it on our youth," Scheyer said specifically about yet another sluggish start by the Blue Devils that set a less-than-ideal tone for the rest of the bout, "because we've had young teams in the past, and each team is different."

Instead, the two-time Duke basketball national champ — as a player in 2010 and an assistant in 2015 — took full responsibility and was upfront about the fact that he doesn't yet know the exact fix moving forward.

"If I had the answer right now, I'd tell you the answer," Scheyer added. "I think that's for us as a coaching staff to figure out and talk through today. But there's no question, not only do you give the other team a lot of confidence, but then we're knocked back, and we're not our same aggressive self. And that's happened now in the [loss to Kansas]...and then the same thing in this, we had to claw our way back."

Ryan Young, a 22-year-old who played a season-high 32 minutes off the bench and notched his first double-double since his freshman season at Northwestern in 2019-20, echoed Scheyer's sentiments while pointing out the heightened intensity of opponents in events such as the Phil Knight Legacy.

"As Coach Scheyer mentions, it's tournament play," Young explained. "And these games, you never have an easy game. Both teams are here, it's a 12 p.m. [PT] game, people are ready to play, and if you don't come out firing...if we don't come out demonstrative and aggressive, all of a sudden, it's a dog fight."

However, at the same time, Young seemed encouraged by the team's response down the stretch.

"I think gritty is the right way to describe it, and I'm just proud of the way that we were able to gut it out," he noted. "We've got a lot of things to work on. That's how tournament play is. All these teams have three games in four days. Most likely, all of them are going to be like that."   

Next, Jon Scheyer and his Blue Devils face the Xavier Musketeers (4-1, 0-0 Big East) in the Phil Knight Legacy semifinals at 3:30 p.m. ET Friday. It wouldn't be a surprise to see the Duke basketball staff tweak its starting lineup, which has featured four rookies in the past three outings, in favor of experience.

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