Eight Things About Duke

• I, for one, was surprised to find out that WVU and Duke have met 23 times on the hardwood. Duke holds a 17-6 advantage. Only one of those meetings has come in my lifetime, and it was a second-round NCAA tournament game in Greensboro, in 1989. In other words, another tourney home game for the Blue Devils. This was the Danny Ferry/Christian Laettner/Quin Synder/Alaa Abdelnaby era of Duke basketball, just before they started going on back-to-back championship runs, against the Chris and Hubie Brooks era Mountaineers. Duke came out on top that day, 70-63.
• WVU’s last win against Duke came in 1977 in Morgantown, during the forgettable Joedy Gardner era, one of Gardner’s best wins ever, against Mike Gminski-led Duke.
• Remember Bucky Waters? He coached at West Virginia for four seasons from 1966-69, before leaving to take over at coach of Duke. The very next season, the Mountaineers visited Duke and fell, 82-70. In four years at Duke, Bucky went 63-45 and failed to make the NCAA tournament.
• From 1950 to 1953, Duke and WVU were conference foes in the Southern Conference. WVU was 1-3 against the Devils in SoCon games.
• Coming back to the current era of Blue Devils basketball, 6′4″ DaMarcus Nelson is the leading scorer and rebounder this season at 14.8 at 5.9 per game. He is the only senior on the squad. Freshman Kyle Singler (6′8″, 220) , sophomores Gerald Henderson (6′4″ 210) and John Scheyer (6′5″, 180) and junior Greg Paulus (6′1″, 185) all average above 10 points a game in the balanced Duke attack.
• The Blue Devils are all talented shooters as each of eight regular players carries a 50% or higher effective field goal rate. They are not a great rebounding team, and they do not have tremendous big men. Brian Zoubek is available off the bench at 7′1″ but no other player is about 6′8″.
• Don’t expect a lot of turnovers in the game, as Duke and WVU had the lowest number of turnovers per game in their respective conferences. WVU’s 10.9 average is one of the tops in the entire nation, while Duke rates at 13.4 giveaways per game.
• Duke will want to move the tempo much more than WVU. The Blue Devils average 75.6 possessions per 40 minutes, while WVU averages 68.1. However, teams that have beaten the Dukies this season have done so by picking up the pace, with teams like Pitt, Miami and Wake Forest running well over 80 possessions in those wins. Duke is 5-0 in games with under 70 possessions this season, so if WVU wants to slow it down they will need maximum efficiency in each possession.

Tags: Bucky Waters, Danny Ferry, Duke, Gerald Henderson, offensive efficiency