Duke Basketball: Takeaways from dominant 30-point home win over Miami

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DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA – JANUARY 18: Head coach Mike Krzyzewski of the Duke Blue Devils (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images) /

Duke Basketball picked up a much-need get-right win, a 30-point victory over Miami (FL). In the win Coach K got some important contributions from the bench and a big-time performance from Matthew Hurt.

Duke Basketball started off the 2019-20 season in great fashion. They looked like easily the strongest team in the nation, in one of the more parity-filled seasons of college basketball in recent memory. But like almost every team this year sans still-undefeated (19-0) San Diego State, Duke suffers a few bumps in the road.

The Blue Devils had an incredible home non-conference winning streak snapped in a heartbreaking loss to Stephen F. Austin. Then, last week they lost consecutive games to Clemson (on the road) and Louisville (at Cameron Indoor). A rare two-game losing streak for the Blue Devils meant Tuesday’s game against Miami was going to be much more important than your usual Miami-Duke matchup.

Making sure there was no chance of another Cameron Indoor upset early, Duke absolutely destroyed the Hurricanes on both ends of the floor in the first half. To their credit, they played hard, and by no means rolled over but Duke overwhelmed them with their talent on a night where the 3-point shots were really falling.

Coach K got to see some great things from Duke in this game that will have big-time importance come March. This includes but is not limited to Matthew Hurt having his best performance of the season, a lockdown performance from the team as a whole, and some solid contributions from the bench unit. If Coach K can press the right buttons in terms of substitutions to dial-up, this Duke team can still be a Final Four squad. But this team has obvious flaws that they have so far been able to mask by playing so well as a unit.

The Duke defense took a hit giving 79 points per game over their two-game losing streak, so holding an opponent to 59 points is important as the win itself. Let’s take a look at the biggest takeaways from Duke’s blowout, get-right victory over Miami.

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