When the 2015 NCAA Tournament brackets were revealed on March 15, it was clear that Kentucky and Duke received very favorable draws in their respective regions. Through the first three games of the tournament, it’s clear that everything initially perceived about these teams’ bracket paths has held up under scrutiny. What we have as a result is a fascinating combination of shared characteristics for two teams who could not be more different at the defensive end of the floor.
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Kentucky is a dominant defensive team. The Wildcats’ offense comes and goes — it can be highly effective some nights, but it can be ordinary on others, as it was against Cincinnati in the round of 32. The defense, though, is always there, and that’s why the Wildcats are three games from history as they prepare for the Elite Eight against Notre Dame. Kentucky’s opponents just don’t shoot well, but that’s because Kentucky is a nasty defensive team which makes it really hard to take the ball to the rim. The drama of Saturday’s Midwest Regional final revolves around Notre Dame’s ability to make shots and put pressure on Kentucky’s defense.
The South Regional final on Sunday afternoon in Houston is little different. Can the Gonzaga Bulldogs become a team that makes perimeter shots and alters the equation for the Duke Blue Devils? While we’ve been busy praising Kentucky’s defense, Duke has moved through this tournament without getting exposed on defense.
It’s surprising that Duke is winning games because it’s holding down the opposition, but it’s not surprising that the Blue Devils are holding down their specific opponents… because their specific opponents don’t have consistent pure shooters. Duke’s two-point field goal defense is 109th in the country, at 46.3 percent, because Jahlil Okafor just isn’t a developed defensive player at this stage in his basketball career. The Blue Devils are a pedestrian 114th in overall field goal defense (42.2 percent). This reinforces what we’ve seen from other Duke teams in recent years. Defense might win championships on an overall level, but when you play Duke in the NCAA tournament, you have to win with offense.
Mercer shot 55.6 percent last year.
Louisville shot 52.7 percent in 2013.
In 2012, Lehigh didn’t shoot all that well (just over 42 percent), but it earned 37 foul shots and scored 47 points in the second half.
In 2011, Arizona scored 93 points against Duke in the Sweet 16 out in Anaheim.
Much as Kentucky’s opponents have failed to hit shots through three games in the Big Dance, so it has also been the case with Duke’s opponents. Kentucky might be a great defensive team and Duke an ordinary one, but the reality of opponents hoisting up bricks has remained the same. This is why both teams received great draws in the NCAA tournament. So far, what’s looked good on paper has remained pristine in reality.
Duke’s round-of-32 opponent, San Diego State, is a classic rock-fight team, much like Cincinnati and West Virginia, Kentucky’s last two foes. (San Diego State hit under 33 percent of its shots against Duke.) Utah, the team Duke disposed of in Friday’s South Regional semifinal, is not a rock-fight team, but the Utes had gotten themselves immersed in some ugly games away from their cozy home in the Huntsman Center over the past month.
Utah looked like a Final Four team through the early weeks of February, but as the season moved on, the Utes began to lose some of their starch. They prevailed in a 47-37 win at Oregon State — a rock fight if there ever was one — and labored on offense for 30 minutes at Washington State before catching fire in the final 10. Of all the teams Duke — with its concerns on defense — hoped to avoid in a possible Sweet 16 matchup when the brackets were announced, Utah was probably not at the top of the list.
On Friday, the Utes — given an assist in the bracketing process by being placed in nearby Portland for the opening weekend — looked out of their depth in Houston… not as competitors, but as shotmakers, and shotmaking shows whether a team can usher Duke out of an NCAA tournament.
Utah is an excellent defensive team, and we saw why against Duke. Jakob Poeltl, who starred for the Utes in their round-of-64 win over Stephen F. Austin, outplayed Duke’s Jahlil Okafor in the low post. The Utes were not torched in transition the way another sound defensive team — Wichita State — was against Notre Dame on Thursday in the first of the eight Sweet 16 games. Duke scored 63 points, but nine of them came as a result of purposeful fouls from the Utes in the final 90 seconds. Before the endgame phase of Friday’s contest, Duke’s three-point and free-throw outputs were noticeable because of how modest they were.
Justise Winslow is pictured in the cover photo (above) for a reason. While his Duke teammates collectively went 12 of 32 from the floor against Utah and, individually, were unable to hit more than three field goals apiece, Winslow solved the dome-shooting problem posed by NRG Stadium in Houston. He hit 8 of 13 shots and scored 21 points, rising above the brick-fest to give Duke a defining performance.
Friday’s other regional site was Syracuse’s Carrier Dome, which is used to housing basketball games and accordingly creates a relatively intimate setting for dome basketball. Houston, on the other hand, features the oddity that is basketball in a football setting with a football-style layout of seats. If Winslow hadn’t found a hot hand, imagine how much worse Duke’s offense would have become.
The bottom line: A decent — not spectacular, just solid — offensive performance from Utah would have put Duke in trouble. The Utes did not provide one. Utah hit 35 percent of its shots. The team’s foremost star, Delon Wright, went 4 of 13 from the field. Jordan Loveridge went 2 for 12. The Utes’ effort was not deficient at all — they collected 18 offensive rebounds to only eight for Duke — but they could not finish second-chance plays… much as they couldn’t finish first-chance plays. Duke, far from its best, received one special performance (from Winslow) and a favorable opponent.
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As is the case in any bracketed tournament — think of Wimbledon — you don’t have to be at your best in six or seven contests over the course of a few weeks. You just have to be better than your opponent on the given day. You can’t win a championship by maxing out in the second or third round. You win by doing what it takes and making sure you can be consistent enough to advance.
Like Kentucky, Duke has not yet faced an opponent which has shot well. Both teams earned No. 1 seeds and deserved to have favorable bracket paths, but as the tournament arrives at the Elite Eight, it is harder to escape a tough matchup, and in Duke’s case, Gonzaga is a team with substantial shotmaking capability at many positions on the floor.
Gonzaga is a top-seven team in the United States in the major shooting metrics (overall shooting percentage, two-point percentage, three-point percentage, effective field goal percentage) and points scored per possession. As we said in our Selection Sunday examination of the teams with the best paths to the Final Four, Gonzaga was slotted in a region with a No. 1 seed it could handle. The Zags certainly have the shotmaking capabilities that can do damage against Duke’s defense. On the precipiece of the school’s first Final Four, it will be up to Kyle Wiltjer and Kevin Pangos to carry Gonzaga home.
Wiltjer is a player custom-made to shred Duke’s defense. Agile and able to play as a face-up shooter or with his back to the basket, Wiltjer can score from the perimeter or the paint. He can shoot over the top of smaller defenders, and his offensive game is polished enough that he has a Plan B if Plan A doesn’t work.
Pangos hands out almost five assists per game, and he hit important three-point shots in the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament. He will want to feed teammates such as Wiltjer, but Pangos’s jump shot will almost certainly be called upon when (not if) Duke tries to handle the other four Zags on the floor.
Gonzaga did not shoot the three very well at all against UCLA in Friday’s South Regional semifinal. One could very reasonably say that the Zags needed time to get used to the dome environment in Houston. Fair enough.
Sunday, no acclimation process is allowable for the Zags. They’ll either become the first team to shoot well against Duke in this tournament and give themselves a shot at a first Final Four in school history… or they’ll mutter about missed opportunities the way Utah did on Friday night.
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Basketball is a wonderfully complex sport in terms of its bewildering array of screening and cutting actions, all performed in very quick bursts. Players have to be intensely focused; otherwise, they’ll find themselves smoked by a backdoor cut.
Yet, for all of basketball’s genuine nuances, this sport remains a matter of simple concepts such as making shots. You can spring players loose for that corner three off a baseline screen, but if they don’t make the shot, your plans and your salt-and-pepper-shaker play diagrams in the local diner between gamedays won’t amount to anything.
Gonzaga can shoot.
As the South Regional final approaches, only one question fundamentally matters: WILL the Zags, in the most important game in school history, be able to turn possibility into actuality with their field goal shooting against Duke?
