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Jayson Tatum's 3-point barrage sends surging Duke to a sixth straight win
Instead of emphasizing unselfishness, patience and ball movement late in Wednesday night’s game at Virginia, Duke tried out a less conventional strategy.
The Blue Devils gave the ball to Jayson Tatum, then got out of the heralded freshman’s way.
In a slow-paced, defensive-oriented game in which neither team broke 50 points until the final three minutes, Tatum’s one-man scoring assault propelled Duke to a massive 65-55 road win. Twenty-one of his game-high 28 points came in the second half including a flurry of late 3-pointers at the shot clock buzzer to put 14th-ranked Virginia away.
One splashed through the net from the left wing with zeroes on the shot clock after Virginia had pulled within a point. Another was a pull-up from just to the right of the top of the key after his defender gave him a little too much space. The third was a step-back 3-pointer from the right corner to extend Duke’s lead to 10 with less than two minutes to go, far too great a deficit for methodical Virginia to erase.
Tatum’s 3-point barrage propelled 12th-ranked Duke to its sixth straight victory, three of which have come against top 20 teams. The surging Blue Devils (21-5, 9-4) have climbed into a tie for second place in the ACC with Florida State and Louisville, just a single game behind first-place North Carolina.
Virginia is two games out of first place and sometimes appears to lack the offensive punch necessary for a league title push or a deep NCAA tournament run. Besides starting point guard London Perrantes (14 points) and reserve guard Ty Jerome (13 points), none of the other Cavaliers looked very dangerous against Duke.
For all the justifiable handwringing over Duke’s 3-4 start to ACC play, the list of teams with a better chance of winning a national title seems very, very short. The consensus preseason No. 1 Blue Devils are beginning to play with the continuity and confidence many expected from them before early-season injuries and off-court turmoil hampered their progress.
On offense, Tatum, Luke Kennard and Grayson Allen give Duke three premier perimeter scorers capable of erupting for 20-plus points on any given night. Granted the Blue Devils’ attack would be even tougher to stop with a pass-first point guard capable of getting that trio easy baskets, but each are still capable of creating their own shots or setting up their teammates.
On defense, Duke is starting to jell now that its roster is finally healthy and able to practice with one-another. Rotations are crisper, on-ball defense has improved and the Blue Devils are not getting gashed as often by dribble penetration.
Holding Virginia to 36.8 percent shooting represented one of Duke’s best defensive efforts of the season, yet it seems premature to put too much stock in this game. The Cavaliers lack the quick, athletic playmaking guards that have given the Blue Devils fits at times this season.
The bigger takeaway on this night was the limitless potential of Tatum, a McDonald’s All-American who missed the first eight games of Duke’s season due to injury and needed another few weeks to fully shake the rust off. Now Tatum is a monster, a dynamic scorer who puts up points at all three levels of the court.
Tatum can still be prone to streaks of selfishness or inefficiency during which he dribbles into the teeth of the defense too often or resorts to too many off-balance jump shots. But when he’s on a hot streak like he was Wednesday night, he is capable of carrying the Blue Devils by himself.
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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
