Duke Basketball: 5 Questions for the Blue Devils against Pittsburgh

Can the Blue Devils play tough defense?

While I personally believe that turnovers are Duke’s true problem, many are pointing to the Blue Devils’ defensive effort as the reason this elite team has two losses already.

The Blue Devils have allowed opposing teams to score at least 80 points eight times this season, so, yes, defense is clearly a problem.

However, teams that score a lot of points usually allow opposing teams to score a lot as well. The Blue Devils are averaging 93.9 points per game, which is good for No. 2 in college basketball.

Any team that scores this easily and this frequently is going to be able to beat any team in the country on any given day. Unfortunately, sometimes shots will not fall, especially for a team that tends to play only seven players more than a few minutes, and Duke must step up their defensive effort when this happens.

They have done that just once this season, against Texas, where they played fantastic defense in the second half to limit the Longhorns to 30 points and send the game to overtime and would win after trailing by 12 at the half.

This is the type of effort we need to see from this team when they are off offensively, and it just did not happen against Boston College or NC State.

Pittsburgh is not a good team offensively, and Duke really has a chance to show us what they are capable of defensively in this one.