Date 12/20 || Time 8:00 || Venue Madison Square Garden || Video ESPN
With the exception of Michigan on February 21st, Duke will finish off non-conference play on Saturday with Texas Tech in Madison Square Garden.
Why the Garden? Well, first because Duke has a lot of alum in the area. They call it Cameron North for a reason. And second, playing in MSG always draws a lot of attention. Duke could play in United Center – and in fact did, facing off against Arkansas there on November 27th – and it doesn’t draw the sort of attention that MSG does.
Years ago, Texas Tech was an afterthought. Then Chris Beard made the Red Raiders a major power and now Grant McCasland has done very well there too. He has an interesting history.
Other than two-year stints at Northeastern JUCO as an assistant and Arkansas State as a head coach, McCasland’s career has been entirely in the Lone Star state. He’s also been at Midland College, Midwestern State, Baylor as an assistant, North Texas and now Texas Tech.
And he’s won everywhere. And this is really important to understand: it’s really hard to win at places like Midland, Midwestern State, Arkansas State and North Texas. His NCAA record is 263-109 (.707) and 142-32 (.816).
For perspective, Mike Krzyzewski’s career winning percentage at Duke is .766. We’re the last people to take anything from Coach K, but even he’d probably admit it’s easier to succeed at Duke than it is at the places McCasland has coached.
Texas Tech finished 28-9 last season (McCasland’s Texas Tech record: 55-21. Winning percentage .724) and so far this season, is 8-3. The losses have come against Illinois (81-77), Purdue (86-56) and Arkansas (93-86).
Arkansas is the only common opponent but Texas Tech also played Wake Forest, so presumably that video will be a two-for-one for scouting purposes.
Impressively, he’s not coaching the same way at Texas Tech as he did at North Texas. With the Mean Green, with less talent, he played a more deliberate style. In Lubbock, he’s opened things up a bit. His offense is a little freer or maybe less structured is a better way to put it, or maybe less deliberate. He has more room for error with Texas Tech.
The unquestioned star for Texas Tech is JT Toppin, a 6-9/230 lb. junior who is a legitimate Player of the Year candidate. Toppin is putting up 21.9 ppg, 10.6 rebounds and 2.0 assists. He’s got a 7-0+ wingspan and is also an excellent defender. He needs to work on his outside game but is widely seen as a future pro. He’ll almost certainly guard Duke’s star Cameron Boozer.
McCaslin also has a solid backcourt with Chris Anderson and Donovan Atwell. Anderson, a 6-3 sophomore from Atlanta, is getting 19.3 ppg, 3.5 apg and an impressive 7.5 assists.
Atwell, a 6-5 senior, is putting up 11.3 ppg, 3 rebounds, a half an assist and 1.3 steals.
LeJuan Watts, a 6-6 junior, averages 14 ppg, 5.9 rebounds and 2.6 assists.
Jaylen Petty is a 6-1 freshman who is getting 26 mpg, so obviously McCaslin trusts him. He’s putting up 7.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 1.9 assists.
Tyeree Bryan is a 6-5 senior who is getting 5.6 ppg and 3.4 rebounds.
The last guy in the rotation, Luke Bamgboye, is 6-11/220 but he is injured and most likely won’t play Saturday.
McCaslin, clearly, is a brilliant coach, but he has had some issues this year, not least of all defense.
Texas Tech has struggled on the defensive end, which is one thing against Purdue or Illinois, but it was a problem against Northern Colorado (the Rockies UNC), where the Bears scored 90 points on the Red Raiders, shooting 44% on threes and 56% overall.
The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal said this about the game against Northern Colorado: “McCasland hasn’t gotten what he needs defensively from, really, anybody else on the team. He pointed to the team’s lack of ability to guard 1-on-1, in the post, covering switches and working through screens. After a solid defensive showing against LSU and a close game against Arkansas, McCasland said the team took ‘a big step back’ on the defensive end.”
That’s a tough assessment from the hometown paper.
Our guess though is that McCasland will figure out some of his issues between Tuesday’s win over the Bears and Saturday’s trip to New York.
And if Duke plays as poorly as it did in the first half against Lipscomb, Texas Tech won’t have to play great defense. They’ll just pick off balls like the Bisons did with Duke’s 16 first-half turnovers.
Part of that is down to exam/holidays and a lack of continuity, and indeed, that could be the case for Texas Tech’s tough game against Northern Colorado (by the way, we forgot to mention that the Bears were missing their best player, Quinn Denker).
Duke has tended to start slow this year and make it up in the second half and at times they may have been to reliant on Cam Boozer.
But we’ve seen signs of change.
Caleb Foster is turning into a solid presence and a guy who can do things when they need to be done. He’s reliable, in other words. Isaiah Evans hasn’t been shooting that well, but he’s due for a big game that might come in New York. And if not, he’s defending well, rebounding well and even blocking shots. He’s been terrific.
So has Patrick Ngongba, who has sort of snuck up on people. Last year he became a reliable presence off the bench but this year, he looks much more like a warrior. He’s really come on. Then there’s Nik Khamenia, who is as tough a player as we’ve seen in Duke blue for a while.
Maliq Brown is, well, Maliq Brown. He’s just a great asset, especially on defense. We’d like to see Dame Sarr take a step up, along with Darren Harris and Cayden Boozer. All three are very capable of playing better and Duke will go up a level when they do.
New York is a funny place to play. The Garden has such an aura that it can intimidate some players. There are other players who thrive there under the bright lights. It’ll be interesting to see who does this time.
