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Cameron Crusher: Duke Blows Out Tennessee In Exhibition Play, 103-64

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During the second half of Duke’s win over Tennessee, CBS’s Matt Norlander sent out a one-word tweet with a still of the game. All his text said was: “What.” Duke was up 74-40. Whatever most people expected to happen, not many people expected the Blue Devils to do that to a preseason Top 10 team. But that’s what happened – and it got worse.

Duke ultimately won, 103-64, and there were some real revelations in this game.

Before we get into anything else, it should be noted that Terrence Hill, who just devastated UNC last spring, only played 4:37 before being injured, and after he went out, so did Troy Henderson. That’s a lot to deal with.

However, Duke was already dominating the game when Hill went out, up 12-2. Hill was the only player who had scored for the Vols, but his came at the line. Tennessee didn’t score a basket until former Demon Deacon Juke Harris got one with 14:30 left in the first half.

Duke just overwhelmed Tennessee at the start of the game, and the Vols never recovered. UT also didn’t even attempt a three until about 9 1/2 minutes into the first half.

On the other hand, Duke scored with relative ease, starting with Dame Sarr’s opening power move to the basket as Duke rolled out to a 17-2 lead.

It didn’t take long for it to turn into a 36-12 lead. Duke just utterly dominated Tennessee, and did so without Caleb Foster and Drew Scharnowski, both of whom are still out with injuries.

And it was also, to an extent, the Deron Rippey show.

Rippey finished with 21 points to lead the Blue Devils on 9-12/3-6 from the floor. He’s a really interesting player. Rippey has drawn comparisons to Jason Williams, but he’s built much more like the great Johnny Dawkins. However, he’s more muscular than the lean Dawkins ever was.

Watching him slice up the Tennessee defense was a lot of fun. He might have been a little bit tentative or nervous against Belmont, but there was none of that here. Rippey showed a lot of positive arrogance in this one. He knew he couldn’t be stopped, and he just shredded the Vols.

John Blackwell had a quieter game, but he finished with 18, and Sarr had 15.

We saw signs of greatness again from JoJo Boumtje Boumtje, who finished with 11 points, 4 rebounds, 3 blocks, and a beautiful assist to Sarr for the second basket of the game.

Pat Ngongba wrapped up with 13 points, 7 boards, and 2 blocks, while Cayden Boozer scored just 2 points, but had 5 rebounds and 6 assists, and showed the sort of court awareness we got used to at the end of last season.

Sebastian Wilkins built on his solid outing against Belmont with 11 points and 5 rebounds. Bryson Howard scored a pair of free throws, but shot 0-6 from the floor. Maxime Meyer scored 2 points and pulled down 5 boards.

Cameron Williams played a lot more than he did against Belmont, getting 18:01. He shot 1-4, finishing with 2 points. He also got 2 rebounds and blocked 2 shots.

Jacob Theodosiou scored a basket and dropped a beautiful pass to Meyer, who wasn’t completely ready for it. Nick Arnold and Brock Davis got in at the end.

The Blue Devils scored 15 points on turnovers, 28 on fast breaks, and also got 46 points in the paint.

There were some negatives tonight. Duke twice had trouble getting the ball in, which seemed to irritate Jon Scheyer, and Duke was a bit sloppy with the ball at times. However, in the end, though it seemed like more, the Devils only had 10 turnovers. Tennessee also got 9 offensive rebounds, which arguably shouldn’t happen against a team with Duke’s size.

In the end, Tennessee just didn’t have enough to counter Duke, and coach Rick Barnes had some concerns. He even apologized to Scheyer for his team’s lack of competitiveness. Then he said this:

“Well, I think some — honestly, some players just don’t know what it takes yet to get it done. That is why it has been great to play a really great team like Xavier and, obviously, Jon and his teams are terrific. Sometimes, you’ve got to go through this.

“I have always been a big proponent of playing five of these because I really think it helps you get exposed. I think it gives you a chance and I am glad we got this. We have got one more Saturday before we kick it off.

“We haven’t been able to put the whole team together yet, but that is not what happened here. What happened here was, again, the first four minutes of the game we wanted to see if a group of guys that we thought could get things done early then we didn’t defend the way we needed to. Didn’t attack the way we needed to attack with the force that we needed to.

“Do I think that our guys want to? I don’t think there’s any question. Do they know how yet? Absolutely not. That is up to me and our staff, we’ll get them there. We have talked about it a lot. We have. We have talked about it from Day 1 what it is going to take at the level we want to win at. Sometimes, it takes this then you will find out who you can really count on.”

Duke plays at Kansas on Sunday in the final exhibition game. We should learn a lot in that one.

Notes – Boumtje Boumtje had some erratic moments in this one – he is a freshman, after all – but ultimately, he looked far more mature than anyone on UT’s squad…Rippey’s game had elements of Williams, Dawkins, and a dash of Allen Iverson…Duke had 7 blocks…As you might expect with a Rick Barnes team, this one got physical, but Duke owned that part of the game, too…Keep in mind that Duke did this without Foster and Scharnowski…Tennessee shot just 33.9% for the game and 22% from behind the line…Duke won the boards, 44-29…

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