Jon Scheyer: Poor Duke Basketball Shooting 'Affected Our Defense'

Duke basketball's scoring woes too often decimate the team's energy on defense.

Duke basketball at Arkansas (Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports)

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.

10-10 | 5 minutes in

🔵 3-7 FG early
😔 2 early fouls for Flip

— Duke Men’s Basketball (@DukeMBB) November 30, 2023

"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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