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Virginia Tech at Duke Roundup

Oh boy, this was a hard one to stomach. The Blue Devils were asleep for the majority of their ACC opener against the Hokies and lost in overtime 69-67. Greg Paulus played the worst game of his career, scoring 0 points and giving out just 2 assists while turning the ball over 5 times and getting absolutely embarassed on the defensive end. Paulus’ season thus far has given all Duke fans plenty of reason to be nervous; after a great season as a freshman, his sophomore year has been very rocky. No longer can the fans or coaches point to Paulus’ preseason foot injury as cause for his maddening inconsistency. The team is now halfway into its season and needs Paulus to become the primetime player everybody expects him to be. After a couple of really good games in a row, this Virginia Tech game is a serious setback for the point guard. Two consecutive away games against Georgia Tech and Miami will show whether this game was an aberration or a sign of worse to come.

I’m ready to write this game off largely on Paulus. He was, in a word, atrocious. The rest of the team wasn’t a whole lot better, but I have never seen Coach K pull his starting point guard out of a game for any reason other than foul trouble. Paulus sat for a long stretch in the middle of the second half which in turn caused all sorts of ball control problems for the Devils. Freshman shooting guard Jon Scheyer is clearly not ready to handle the offense, and junior DeMarcus Nelson, as good a scorer as he can be, is simply too reckless with the ball to be a distributor. The team didn’t shoot poorly, but it turned the ball over a stunning 20 times, explaining Tech’s 69 points, the second-highest total Duke has allowed this year. This year’s team is built around defense, and the turnovers absolutely crippled what had been a whithering Duke man-to-man.

There were a couple of bright spots worth mentioning. Gerald Henderson, Duke’s top-rated freshman, is garnering more and more playing time. This kid is a Player of the Year in the making. He played a career-high 37 minutes and scored 10 points. Freshman forward Lance Thomas, another future All-American, finally returned to the lineup after being sidelined for a month with an ankle sprain. He was a little lost at times, but Duke badly needs his muscle next to Josh McRoberts. As for Duke’s top scorers, Nelson was excellent, scoring 22 points on 8 of 13 shooting (4-6 3PT), including a three-pointer with 18 seconds left to tie the contest. McBob, on the other hand, had a tough first half but was strong in the second. The Hokies did not want him to beat them, but McRoberts did his best to carry the Devils anyway. He scored 13 points in the second half (16 total for the game) and is beginning to show signs of becoming a dominating paint presence.

 
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