The Fact Duke Beat Auburn By Playing Ugly Is Even More Terrifying Than The Kentucky Blowout

Duke 78, Auburn 72

Listen, I know it’s not a blowout, but this is even more terrifying if you’re not a Duke fan. This was a neutral court game over a top-10 team and Duke comfortably led the entire game. It wasn’t even that it was a comfortable lead, Duke did it while playing ugly. It wasn’t like the Kentucky game where Duke just came out and absolutely blew the lid off the damn thing. Duke shot just 28% from three. They shot just 67% from the free throw line.

And they still controlled the game.

A main reason why? Well, defense, but more importantly – Marques Bolden. That’s what’s going on with this Duke team. We all talk about the four freshmen and rightfully so. But, guys like Bolden and Jack White are coming in and filling the roles perfectly. Look at what Bolden did tonight

That’s to go along with 11 points, 9 rebounds and 7 blocks. He stepped in and protected the rim, allowing Duke to continue to switch 1-through-4. It’s something like this that makes me even more terrified of Duke just dominating every game than the obvious talent of Zion/RJ/Reddish/Jones.

This team is still going to get better. We’re still going to see them get better defensively. But, what they do have is this extremely high floor to go with the ceiling. We’re seeing the fact that they can just wear you down and beat you different ways. Early it was RJ and Reddish hitting shots while RJ also threw this in

Then in the second half they started working Zion in the midpost. This is where he’s just downright scary. Yes, he can play out on the wing and attack off the bounce. But, Duke started putting him in ISO sets in the midpost, letting him catch, look over the floor and then attack. It led to fouls. It led to him getting buckets in the lane. It also led to him nearly killing Horace Spencer, which I’m pretty sure would have broke Twitter

So it’s another neutral court top-10 win for Duke. Just in a different manner. And that’s downright scary.