Duke's season of dysfunction continues with loss to Dennis Smith and NC State

For Duke, 2016/17 was billed as a season of endless dreams and endless expectations, and was meant to be a season of endless success. The Blue Devils were touted as the most talented team in college basketball, and arguably one of the most talented teams the sport had ever seen.

As the end of January nears, that billing and those expectations couldn’t seem further away in the past. Instead, the Blue Devils’ season is devolving into a dysfunctional mess. It sunk to a new low Monday night with an inexcusable 84-82 loss to NC State, the program’s first to the Wolfpack at Cameron Indoor Stadium since 1995.

Duke has now lost three of its last four, and is 3-4 in the ACC. But Monday’s loss didn’t just send the Blue Devils reeling further in the wrong direction; it let a poorly kept secret further out of the bag: Duke just might not be that good.

A long list of factors contributed to Monday’s debacle — and make no mistake, it was a debacle; NC State has lost at home to Wake Forest and Georgia Tech, and to North Carolina by 51 points. Chief among those factors may be the commonality between this night and that night in 1995: the absence of Mike Krzyzewski, who has ceded coaching duties to Jeff Capel while recovering from back surgery.

More noticeable, though, is the underperformance of that talent that was supposed to be so special. Preseason Player of the Year favorite Grayson Allen, controversy aside, has been somewhere between remarkably ordinary and downright bad since returning from suspension. He shot 1-for-9 from three Monday, and many of the nine were wide open. Duke, as a team, shot 8-for-28 from deep against a team that had been allowing ACC opponents to shoot around 40 percent from three.

The Blue Devils’ interior defense was also seriously lacking. Jayson Tatum showed NBA-caliber skills on the offensive end, but couldn’t keep Abdul-Malik Abu out of the lane. Amile Jefferson was hesitant and ineffective in his second game back from a foot injury. Harry Giles flashed scoring ability in the first half, but was a non-factor in the second.

Despite all of this, a Luke Kennard layup put Duke up 68-59 with under seven minutes to play, and NC State coach Mark Gottfried called his final timeout. The Blue Devils should have been able to cruise to a comfortable victory. But their many stars came up small, while the Wolfpack’s lone star shone bright.

Dennis Smith, NC State’s freshman point guard, was head and shoulders above any other player on the floor, even Tatum. Duke couldn’t stop him — though to be fair, not many college teams could. Smith scored 32 points despite shooting just 8-for-15 from the free throw line, and compiled a highlight reel in 40 minutes that most players can’t put together in a full season:

Smith came out of that final timeout and led NC State on a 13-2 run. He capped it off with a three-pointer that put his Wolfpack into the lead. A few minutes later, he extended the gap to six with a driving layup.

Duke made just one field goal between the 5:35 and 0:17 marks of the second half as NC State pulled away, then barely salted the game away with free throws. Several misses gave Jayson Tatum an opportunity to tie or win the game, but the freshman dribbled the ball off his foot, and Smith zoomed the other way for an after-the-buzzer exclamation point:

The staggering thing about Monday night, though, was that even outside of Smith, NC State didn’t look at all inferior to the talent-laden Blue Devils. Our minds, influenced by those preseason expectations, wanted Duke to pull away; reality refused to let it happen.

Duke’s season hasn’t gone in this direction because of distractions; its pieces just haven’t clicked into place, in part due to structural issues, and in part due to individual underperformance. The Blue Devils don’t have a point guard, and thus the ball doesn’t move as crisply as it needs to. With Giles still feeling his way back from knee surgery and Jefferson noticeably not the player he was earlier this season, there is no inside-outside balance.

It’s tough to know how much of the structural issues can be addressed by Krzyzewski’s return. Capel has tinkered, and found what he thought was a winning formula when he benched Allen, Kennard and Giles to start the second half against Miami. His reserve unit went on a 22-1 run to see off the Hurricans. Capel started that same five against NC State, but the results weren’t nearly as positive.

If there is a positive for Duke, it’s that the issues are making themselves frighteningly clear in January rather than in March, and that the resulting losses could force changes upon Capel, eventually Krzyzewski, and the players. But those issues are worrying enough that positive thoughts, along with the solutions to those issues, remain very far from the surface. Monday’s loss drove them down even deeper — deeper than they’ve been in Durham in a long time.