Duke basketball dominated for an 83-52 win over Louisville on Monday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The No. 4 Blue Devils (19-1, 8-0 ACC) held the Cardinals to a season-low 52 points on 29.6% shooting. Louisville entered the contest with the league’s highest scoring offense.
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The Blue Devils were led by Cameron Boozer’s 19 points with Isaiah Evans and Patrick Ngongba II each adding 15, with 12 of Ngongba’s points coming in the second half. Nik Khamenia rounded Duke’s double-figure scorers with a career-high 14 points, all coming in the second half.
Here’s some of what head coach Jon Scheyer had to say after the win over the Cardinals:
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On Nik Khamenia and Patrick Ngongba II
“I want to talk about two guys. Nik Khamenia, the toughness that he showed tonight and all season. I didn’t play him as much as I probably should have gotten him in that first half, it just was a little bit disjointed. He stays ready. He comes out in the second half and just was a pro’s pro. Mad big time plays. It all started with his defense and then the offense came with it. And then Pat in the second half. I think the dynamic of Pat and Maliq, I’m not sure what gets talked about, but the fact that we have those two guys for 40 minutes of a game. Maliq has five offensive rebounds, their passing and then the way that Pat came out in the start of the second half and asserted himself, I tried to call his number a couple times to get him going, was big time.”
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“I think Nik is on the journey, not even like most freshmen, he’s still in rare, in terms of he’s making an impact on one of the best teams in the country. You’re going to go through your moments of ups and downs and I think he’s figuring out how to be really successful in college and how to adjust in certain areas, but also how to have that belief in yourself still. His family, I give them so much credit, from day one with him, they just wanted him to grow, experience this, he’s been all-in, had an amazing attitude. I couldn’t be happier for him.”
Growth in the last month
“I’ve said to you guys before in January, I feel you get a chance to really learn about the identity of your team and who we could be. It doesn’t mean winning and losing, I think it just means understanding the process and understanding the areas you have to grow and get better. I think the thing that you saw is those critical moments where they made shots and made a run, I thought the focus was there. Against Louisville, you have to… you can never rest, because they’re always moving. I thought the discipline and the maturity showed up in those moments, end of the first half as we got the lead. Start of the second half was a mature response, and again, I’m just so proud of the character, I’m just proud of the mentality of our guys. I think it showed up really in that area. And again playing to our strengths, we found that the paint game was going to be huge. 42-10 (in the paint), 47-26 on the boards, that’s the difference maker. I just think that shows our competitiveness.”
On Duke’s defense
“I don’t care what we do as coaches, if you don’t have guys take that pride in being coached, if they don’t want to grow as players, I don’t care what we do. I think it starts there when you have the right people in the room. We have the right people, we get the chance to coach them. I think our staff has done an incredible job. I think we’ve actually learned to give these guys less and in giving them less I think get a chance to focus on what’s most important, which is your competitiveness. We talk about winning the details, which the details for us are very black and white. We don’t have 26 things, there’s two or three things we have to do, and that’s follow it. Our guys had an incredible focus in their preparation. I think they’re learning and I think they’ve even been excited about how to make an impact on defense and how that carries over to the offensive end.”
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Anna Snyder covers Duke for The Fayetteville Observer as part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at asnyder@usatodayco.com or follow her @annaesnydr on X, formerly known as Twitter.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: What Jon Scheyer said after Duke basketball’s win over Louisville
