While many in the college basketball world were surprised to see Duke lose in the fashion it did to Michigan State on Tuesday night, no one was more shocked by the result than Blue Devils head coach Jon Scheyer.
Duke fell to the Spartans, 79-73, but Michigan State controlled the game from the jump. The Spartans scored the opening bucket of the contest 33 seconds after tip, and didn’t allow Duke to take the lead once throughout the entire game.
While No. 2 Duke losing on a neutral floor to No. 5 Michigan State by six points won’t hurt the Blue Devils’ résumé, that doesn’t mean Scheyer had the urge to find any positives after his team’s loss.
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The head coach was sure to give Tom Izzo’s Spartans their flowers and respect during his postgame news conference, but made it clear that he was a bit shocked by what he saw from his own team on Tuesday.
“Congrats to Michigan State,” Scheyer said during his opening remarks inside the press area. “They 100 percent deserved to win. I thought they outcompeted us. They played more together.”
“For me, it was a little bit of an out-of-body experience,” Scheyer continued. “Our team, I thought our team, we weren’t connected. Just the bottom line, we weren’t connected, and we’re going to fix it. I promise you that much, and our fans deserve better. That was not a good performance tonight.”
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The good news for the Blue Devils is that their loss to the Spartans was just their third game of the season, and they have another three-plus months to find the cohesiveness Scheyer was hoping to see against Michigan State.
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The most glaring takeaway from Tuesday’s contest was seeing Duke shoot just 33 percent from the field and 70 percent from the free-throw line. The Spartans shot 45 percent from the floor.
Scheyer’s squad will be battle-tested multiple times, and soon, with matchups against Top 10 teams Illinois, UConn, and Florida coming between now and December 1.