Duke obviously didn't read my last post, where I warned that Duke had better not take Temple lightly. And it wasn't that the Blue Devils didn't play hard but the type of play they decided to bring wasn't even close to good enough as Duke fell to the Owls 78-73 and drop to 12-2 on the season.
Starting with Seth Curry, who had probably his worst game ever in a Duke uniform, Ryan Kelly and Andre Dawkins who for all intent and purposes, invisible, the Blue Devils looked unfocussed, and unprepared to play.
Tyler Thornton had some spurts but ended up with foul trouble and wasn't effective getting the offense going at all. Neither was his back up and recent ACC Rookie of the week Quinn Cook who committed his first turnover in three games.
The only players who seemed able to even keep up in the game with the Owls were the Plumlee brothers, who were brilliant, and Austin Rivers.
Mason Plumlee finished with 16 points and 13 rebounds. His brother had 17 points and three rebounds and Rivers had 11 points.
No other Blue Devils had more than 7 points as Temple dictated the tempo of the game with their defense. And the fact that Temple out rebounded Duke is just an embarrassment. The Blue Devils shot 47 percent from the floor but allowed Temple to shoot 56 percent.
It was an ugly game pretty much from start to finish.
Make no mistake Duke should have not lost this game, but the way they played against Temple, they didn't deserve to win the game. The Owls are a good team and were capable of winning, I thought as much. And it certainly helped that Duke played the way they did.
Hats certainly go off to Temple. They played a brilliant game. They beat a bigger opponent on the boards, shot lights out in key points and used their bigger back court to abuse Duke's smaller one.
This game though is bound to be over analyzed by Duke fans and detractors alike though. But why is anyone really shocked?
Duke plays at least one game per year against a team they should probably beat but manage to play awful and lose.
Did Temple expose things about Duke, well kind of, but nothing we didn't already know was a weakness. Duke's perimeter defense was again less than satisfactory against the bigger and longer guards for the Owls.
Austin Rivers is really the only player that can get his shot off whenever he wants it and he is a freshman and at times made freshman mistakes. And Duke as a whole commits far too many turnovers.
And if you've followed my writing or me on Twitter you know my feelings about Duke's black uniforms. I've done extensive research and discovered that when Duke brings out the black uniforms they lose. Not always but enough to make it a heart dropping moment when they come out wearing them.
In fact one of my first game Tweets was:
'OH NO!!! NOT THE BLACK UNIFORM. SMH'
And boy did that tweet ever prove to be prophetic.
But I digress. Duke is still very much a work in progress and certainly didn't play like a team deserving their lofty ranking, but it is just one game. Like I said there are countless writers already over analyzing this game.
Duke loses anywhere from 4-7 games in a give year so it is a big deal when they do actually lose, but why anyone would be so shocked and dwell on it for very long is beyond me.
I'll give this game a night to sink in and reflect more on it later.
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