date 12/20 || time 8:00 || site Madison Square Garden|| video ESPN
In addition to Michigan State on Feb. 21, Duke will conclude its non-conference schedule with Texas Tech on Saturday at Madison Square Garden.
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Why a garden? Well, first of all because Duke has a lot of alumni in the area. There’s a reason they call it Cameron North. Secondly, playing at MSG always draws a lot of attention. Duke could play at the United Center — in fact, against Arkansas there on Nov. 27 — and it doesn’t draw nearly as much attention as MSG.
A few years ago, Texas Tech was an afterthought. Then Chris Beard made the Red Raiders a strong team and now Grant McCasland is doing a great job there as well. He has an interesting history.
With the exception of two years as an assistant coach at Northeast JUCO and two years as head coach at Arkansas, McCasland has spent his career entirely in the Lone Star State. He also served as an assistant at Midland College at Midwestern State, Baylor, North Texas and now Texas Tech.
He won everywhere. It’s important to understand this: It’s really hard to win in places like Midland, Midwestern States, Arkansas and North Texas. His NCAA record was 263-109 (.707) and 142-32 (.816).
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To put it into perspective, Mike Krzyzewski has a career winning percentage of .766 at Duke. We’re the last to take anything from Coach K, but even he might admit that success is easier to come by at Duke than where McCasland coached.
Texas Tech went 28-9 last season (McAsland’s record at Texas Tech: 55-21, .724 winning percentage) and is 8-3 so far this season. Lost to Illinois (81-77), Purdue (86-56) and Arkansas (93-86).
Arkansas is the only common opponent, but Texas Tech also plays Wake Forest, so presumably the video will be a two-on-one for scouting purposes.
What’s impressive is the way he coaches at Texas Tech is different from the way he coached at North Texas. He has less talent than the average Green but plays more deliberately. In Lubbock, he opened things up a little bit. His offense is a little freer, or maybe less structured is a better word, or maybe less deliberate. He had more room for error at Texas Tech.
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Texas Tech’s unquestioned star is JT Toppin, a 6-9/230-pound junior who is a legitimate candidate for Player of the Year. Toppin averaged 21.9 points, 10.6 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game. He has a 7-0+ wingspan and is an excellent defender. He needs to work on his outside game but is widely considered a future pro. He will almost certainly guard Duke star Cameron Boozer.
McCaslin also has a solid backfield in Chris Anderson and Donovan Atwell. Anderson is a 6-foot-3 sophomore from Atlanta who is averaging 19.3 points, 3.5 assists and an impressive 7.5 assists per game.
Atwell is a 6-foot-5 senior averaging 11.3 points, 3 rebounds, 0.5 assists and 1.3 steals per game.
LeJuan Watts, a 6-foot-6 junior, averaged 14 points, 5.9 rebounds and 2.6 assists per game.
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Jaylen Petty is a 6-foot-1 freshman scoring 26 MPG, so clearly McCaslin trusts him. He contributed 7.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 1.9 assists.
Tyree Bryan is a 6-foot-5 senior averaging 5.6 points and 3.4 rebounds per game.
The last man in the rotation, Luke Bamgboye, has a record of 6-11/220, but he is injured and is likely not to feature in Saturday’s match.
Obviously, McCaslin is a great coach, but he’s had some issues this year, especially on defense.
Texas Tech struggled defensively, which is one thing against Purdue or Illinois, but was a problem against Northern Colorado (UNC of the Rockies), where the Bears scored 90 points against the Red Raiders while shooting 44 percent from three and 56 percent overall.
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The Lubbock Avalanche Journal said of the game against Northern Colorado: “McAsland didn’t really get the coverage he needed from anyone else on the team. He pointed to the team’s lack of one-on-one coverage, screen switches and coverage. After a strong defensive performance against LSU and against Arkansas, McCasland said the team “took a big step back” defensively.”
It was a harsh assessment from a hometown newspaper.
Our guess, though, is that McCasland will work through some of his issues between Tuesday’s win over the Bears and Saturday’s trip to New York.
If Duke plays as poorly as it did in the first half against Lipscomb, Texas Tech won’t have to play great defense. They’ll just have to deal with Duke’s 16 first-half turnovers like the Bison did.
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Part of this is due to exams/holidays and a lack of continuity, and in fact, that may have been the case in Texas Tech’s tough game against Northern Colorado (by the way, we forgot to mention that the Bears lost their best player in Quinn Denker).
Duke has tended to start slow this year and make up for it in the second half, where they may rely on Cam Boozer at times.
But we are already seeing signs of change.
Caleb Foster is turning into a reliable guy, a guy who gets things done when they need to be done. In other words, he is reliable. Isaiah Evans hasn’t been shooting well, but he’ll be playing in a potentially big game in New York. Even if not, he defends well, rebounds well, and even blocks shots well. He’s awesome.
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The same goes for Patrick Ngongba, who kind of sneaks up on people. He was a reliable presence off the bench last year, but this year, he’s looking more like a warrior. He’s really here. And then there’s Nik Khamenia, the toughest player we’ve ever seen on Duke blue.
Malik Brown is Malik Brown. He is a huge asset, especially on defense. We’d like to see Mrs. Sarr take a step forward with Darren Harris and Kayden Boozer. All three are more than capable of playing better, and when they do, Duke will be on the next level.
New York is a fun place to play. The aura of the garden is enough to scare some players. There are other players who thrive under the bright lights. It will be interesting to see who does it this time.
