Duke Basketball Notebook

JahlilThe Duke Blue Devils pushed their season record to 20-2 with a rollicking 90-60 win over Notre Dame.  Cameron was rocking as the Blue Devils played their best game of the season both on offense and defense.

Duke has been playing with a new-found chemistry after the dismissal of junior guard Rasheed Sulaimoin.  So far, the team has not shown any signs of having just eight scholarship players on the roster as hindering their set goals.

It's been a great sequence of events for Duke of late, on and off the court.  With Mike Krzyzewski winning his 1000th game and passing the legendary Dean Smith for the most ACC wins, there have been worthy celebrations.  But you can bet that Krzyzewski has quickly put to bed those honors and focused back in on the job at hand.

What the nation will watch for tonight is if the Blue Devils can put their impressive win over the Irish behind them quickly.  The reason is an incredibly short turn around where they travel to Florida to take on the Seminoles.  Florida State is a team that has notoriously played the Blue Devils tough in their venue.  And the Blue Devils have to show that they can get up for the middle teams of the ACC as they do big games.

I expect the Blue Devils to have enough left in the tank to take care of business in Tallahassee.  They can give their maximum effort having five days before they travel to Syracuse at weeks end.  As for the Syracuse, you can bet that the Duke game at home has become their Super Bowl.  The reason, of course, being their recent self imposed sanction to not participate in the tournament.

Krzyzewski has a way of setting short team goals for his team and this will surely prove to be another interesting week.  He knows Duke needs ACC wins to get back into the regular season race.  Before the recent Justin Anderson injury this seemed like a tall task.  The reason being the Blue Devils play a much tougher schedule than do the Virginia Cavaliers.  One must remember, there is no round robin in ACC play.

Whether or not the Blue Devils are to win the regular season, they have built quite the resume with stellar road wins which should be beneficial when the NCAA pairings are announced.  But there is the ACC Tournament which is quite obviously loaded with hungry teams like never before.  The Blue Devils next home game is against arch rival North Carolina.  As usual, the two teams play twice and do not met until late in the season.

The season has its ebbs and flows and the Blue Devils are the only team in the nation so dependent on three freshman starters.  No matter how talented the trio of Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow and Tyus Jones are, they are still young and still learning.  But the emergence of Matt Jones and the steady and unselfish play of Amile Jefferson has been a major key to recent success for Duke.  And then there is Quinn Cook who continues to play smarter basketball and show leadership which is always needed.  Cook and Jones have taken on a can-do attitude of late, while Jefferson has sacrificed personal stats for team stats.

Duke Basketball is in a good place right now and one where they need to take it one game at a time.  They've come together as a team and are playing great basketball since their incredible comeback victory at Virginia.  But the ACC is unforgiving and the proof lies in earlier losses to Miami an N.C. State.

If Duke comes out of tonight with a win over Florida State, a team that will make this their biggest home game of the season, it will show they've learned even more as a team.  The Noles will be hungry and bring their A game and Duke needs another ACC win to stay in the race.  Don't expect another 30 point win for it just doesn't work like that, but just getting the win is the key tonight and a challenge I think the Blue Devils will meet.