Duke Blue Devils: The Oregon Trail
The Duke Blue Devils look to advance to the Elite Eight by taking on Pac-12 Champion Oregon.
For the Duke Blue Devils, extending their stay in Anaheim, CA means beating the Oregon Ducks in the round of sixteen tonight. It is a tale of two teams and a tale of two conferences when the 4 seed Blue Devils and the 1 seed Ducks hit the floor around 10:00 PM.
The conferences involved are the ACC and the Pacific 12 which took some interesting roads to get to this matchup despite both putting seven teams in the tournament field. Oregon is the last Pac-12 team left while the ACC has only lost one team, Pittsburgh, in the second and third rounds. So was the Pac 12 overrated in the tournament? It is left to Oregon to answer the question.
The other question is how good is the ACC really? Putting six teams in the Sweet Sixteen is astounding. You could potentially have two all ACC regional finals if North Carolina plays Notre Dame and Virginia plays Syracuse. Yet the seeds they have beaten to get there are rather uninspiring. Right now Syracuse owns the best win over 7 seed Dayton.
That path is not just UNC and Virginia being number ones and Miami being a number 3. Duke has played the 13 seed (unavoidable) and the 12 seed to get where they are. That gauntlet of Wilmington and Yale offered a route that mostly minimized Duke’s flaws. As luck would have it, Oregon might not be the team to take advantage of those either.
To beat Duke, you need to wear their shallow bench out physically and get fouls on their post defenders. This is best done with a team with depth and presence down low. Even if Duke plays flawlessly, like they did against Yale in the first half, their gas tank only has so much fuel. Yale came back in the second half, and Notre Dame beat them in overtime to illustrate this point.
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Oregon does not really do either of those things. They played seven men against St. Joseph’s. That plays into Duke’s hands. The pace of the game will suit the Blue Devils and their seven include scorer Grayson Allen and first round pick Brandon Ingram.
Oregon’s leading scorer is 6’6” forward Dillon Brooks. Brooks averages seventeen a game and scored twenty-five on St. Joe’s. Yet he spent a fair amount of time making three point shots away from the paint. Given Marshall Plumlee’s height advantage anyway, Duke would love for Ingram to chase Brooks around the perimeter and avoid contact fouls down low.
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The other big is Chris Boucher, who averages twelve points a game over the season. He was barely heard from in the game against St. Joe’s. Plumlee will need to win this matchup since he has not seen a real big since C.J. Gettys got into foul trouble in round three.
The other big matchup issue for Duke will be point guard Tyler Dorsey. He was in a bit of a slump, but he hit the big shot against St. Joe’s. At 6’4”, the freshman has good height for his position and can see over smaller guards. It will be interesting to see who Duke will assign to guard him. Likely Derryck Thornton and Luke Kennard will share the responsibility with a little Grayson Allen thrown in if necessary.
So it does not look like Oregon is the kind of team that can really punish Duke’s weaknesses. Because of this, Duke should win a close hard fought game. So maybe there can be some California dreamin of a regional final. That team will already be known since Duke plays the late game.