For about two-thirds of Duke's game against St. John's on Saturday, the Blue Devils were the dominant team. From pretty much the first television time out to about the 10-minute mark in the second half, Duke was handling the Red Storm with relative ease. Fans were relaxing, announcers were filling time with random commentary but then somewhere on the way to Duke's 18th victory something happened.
It was like someone turned off Duke's intensity like when someone turns off a light switch when you are in a room by yourself. It gets instantly dark and you don't know why. Such was the second half of this game.
Duke was winning big and before you knew it Dick Vitale was scrapping his filler material and it was game on in Cameron Indoor Stadium again.
The Blue Devils would wind up winning 83-76 and improve to 18-3 (5-1 ACC) but it was anything but a work of art. Most who watched the game would likely say Duke should have easily won the game by 20 points if not more.
What was the problem?
For starters it was the Blue Devils' defense again that was non existent. A glaring problem all year long, it once again reared its ugly head. It was a major problem early in the game before the Red Storm got cold and Duke stepped things up.
But when St. John's made its run to bring what was a 22 point lead down to as few as four, Duke didn't look like they could have stopped a high school team.
St. John's continued to exploit the Blue Devils defensive shortcomings. Coming into the game the Blue Devils allowed the highest opponents field goal percentage of any team in the ACC. Saturday saw the Red Storm shoot 44.1 percent which was just above the season average.
And that is a team that stared five freshman and has their head coach missing from the team as he recovers from his battle with cancer.
Something just isn't right with this team.
There is very little problem with Duke's offense though. Mason Plumlee had another double double scoring 15 points and grabbing 17 rebounds.
Ryan Kelly, Austin Rivers and Andre Dawkins also scored in double digits. Duke also outrebounded the Red Storm and shot twice as many free throws.
Still half-way through the second half there St. John's was and a game that was comfortably in hand was suddenly a nail bitter down the stretch.
What can be made of yet another Duke defensive breakdown? The Red Storm were able to get a lot of easy shots. And most of them came down low. That isn't a good sign against a team with a much bigger front court.
At times it looked as if St. John's was simply dribbling through and around cones and chairs to get to the rim for easy layups and dunks.
After the Blue Devils took a substantial lead that featured much improved defensive effort, they seemed to tap on the intensity breaks.
The only thing Duke's collapse can be attributed to, at least from my vantage point, is a lack of intensity to playing defense. It isn't that the Blue Devils don't play hard, but their defensive effort when compared to other years has got to be reaching historically abysmal lows.
And that is something that has to be driving Mike Krzyzewski nuts. He saw his team blow a lead in a game they should have won by 30 points and it was because of the defense and a lack of focus.
I know they say a win is a win, but no Duke fan can reasonably be feeling all warm and fuzzy inside after Saturday's game.
Duke is winning and that is great, but if they are going to be a team that makes any noise later in the year come March, they have got to play much better on the defensive end and I'm not sure what buttons the Duke coaching staff have to push to make that happen.
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