Duke Basketball: Takeaways from Blue Devils humbling defeat to NC State

Duke has become too dependent on Tre Jones

Tre Jones is one of the best players in the country, a point guard with clear deficiencies but one who is able to lead his team to victory through a combination of skill and will. But while Jones is a great player, asking him to successfully function as the only ballhandler on offense and the go-to option as a lockdown ace on defense is simply placing too much on his shoulders. Jones played a team-high 35 minutes on Wednesday, finishing with 17 points, 9 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals, and 2 turnovers on 6-for-18 shooting from the field.

Duke only had one player outside of Jones score in double figures (Carey with 21 points) and on top of that, no Duke player other than Jones had more than one assist. There are plenty of teams in the nation that rely heavily on a talented point guard to run the show but perhaps none suffer from stagnant stretches of ball movement as much as Duke does. This makes for moments like Wednesday night, where the Blue Devils were down 10-2 before someone other than Jones put points on the board.

Outside of Jones, no other player on Duke has much east-west “wiggle” and Cassius Stanley specifically threw some lazy passes after failing to beat his man off the dribble. One of Stanley’s telegraphed passes led to a breakaway dunk for Johnson and was a microcosm of the game itself. It was impossible for Jones to lead a comeback effort with so little support since he isn’t exactly a microwave scorer. And while this section is about Jones needing more help, his 3-for-5 shooting effort from the free throw line left a bit to be desired.

Coach K is going to have to continue to play Jones big-minutes as they try to claim a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament but he is going to have to focus more on using him as a decoy/set-up man on offense to conserve energy for him to neutralize the Markell Johnsons of the world.