Zion WilliamsonSean Rayford/Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. — It’s still bizarre that Duke’s biggest concern is three-point shooting.
When college basketball introduced the three-point shot for the 1986-87 season, the Blue Devils shot 40.2 percent from behind it. En route to the 1992 national championship, Duke shot 43.4 percent that season. When the team won it all again in 2001, it set the since-broken-several-times NCAA record of 407 threes in a single season.
In 31 out of 32 years from 1986-87 to 2017-18, Duke connected on at least 36.3 percent of its three-point attempts. Even the off year’s 34.9 percent (2008-09) was still better than the national average (34.2).
Hundreds of thousands of college basketball fans spent some portion of their childhood out in the driveway, shooting from three-point range, dreaming of becoming the next Bobby Hurley, Jeff Capel, Trajan Langdon, Jay Williams, JJ Redick, etc.
Can anyone remember a time before this year that Duke lacked a three-point assassin? Even during the disastrous 13-18 campaign in 1994-95, Capel and Langdon each hit better than 40 percent.
Yet, here we are with the Blue Devils shooting 30.7 percent—it’s an even more unsightly 29.8 percent if you take out the 27-of-62 performance in the first two regular-season games—and with that perimeter game looking like it could be their downfall.
Even stranger than the fact that they can’t consistently hit 21-foot jump shots is that we’re most concerned about it right after their best two-game stretch in more than four months.
From November 20 through March 16, the Blue Devils played 30 contests and shot better than 38.5 percent just three times. They hadn’t hit 36 percent of their three-point attempts in consecutive games since the season’s first two outings. And in the final 11 games before the tournament, they made 26.4 percent and didn’t have one performance better than 35.3.
But Duke shot it well in its first two tournament games. It was 8-of-19 (42.1 percent) in the first round against North Dakota State and 10-of-25 (40.0 percent) in the close call against UCF. RJ Barrett (4-of-7), Zion Williamson (4-of-9) and Cam Reddish (5-of-10) were a combined 50 percent from distance in Columbia.
It didn’t feel like it, though, did it?
Rather than the “Zion vs. Tacko” amazement with which we all entered that second-round showdown, the postgame narrative surrounded Tacko Fall’s “guarding” Tre Jones and Jordan Goldwire by repeatedly leaving them wide open to dig their own graves.
Jay Williams @RealJayWilliams
Tacko Fall is straight up NOT guarding Tre Jones & just sitting in the paint. Genius strategy by Johnny Dawkins.
“It’s definitely something different we haven’t seen before,” said Duke forward Jack White. “In that respect, it obviously threw us off a little bit.”
“[It surprised me] a little bit just because they were playing off so far,” said Goldwire. “I knew they were going to play me [that way] because we have two guys that attack the rim really hard. They tried to take that away. And I haven’t really shot the ball well this season, so not really surprised by how open I was.”
Goldwire was 1-of-20 from three-point range before the tournament and hasn’t been much of a shot-taker during his limited time on the court. If White (hamstring) had been available, Goldwire likely wouldn’t have played much last weekend. And White said he’s confident he’ll be ready for the Sweet 16, so we probably shouldn’t fret too much about how Duke can hide Goldwire in its offense.
Jones is a different story, though, as he plays 34 minutes per game and didn’t come out for a moment against UCF. He is an elite defender, a solid offensive traffic director and a capable driver.
He is not a good in-game three-point shooter.
Jones looks pure in pregame warm-ups, but it’s another story once the ball is tipped. He entered the tournament shooting 24.7 percent from three-point range, and he was 1-of-10 in the first two rounds. (He’s down to 23.2 percent.) The last time he made multiple three-pointers in a single game was November 19.
To put it lightly, opposing teams have noticed.
Tre JonesSean Rayford/Associated Press
If memory serves correctly, Duke’s first game against North Carolina this season—”The Shoe Game,” if you will—was the first time an opponent showed no respect for Jones’ perimeter play. There were moments that night when Jones was by himself on one side of the court, free to hit a three if he could.
He finished 1-of-6 from distance and missed all five of his two-point attempts.
That same late-February week, Syracuse and Virginia Tech followed a similar script against the Blue Devils. Those zone defenses already dare teams to shoot threes, but they took that to the extreme with Jones, barely even bothering to rotate over to contest his looks.
He went 2-of-11 in those games.
Granted, during that stretch with Williamson sidelined and with White mired in his 0-of-infinity stretch—it was 28 straight misses, but it felt like he would never hit a shot again—it made sense for Jones to try to snap out of his funk. Aside from Barrett and Reddish, Duke didn’t have much in the way of scoring options.
Now that Williamson is back, why is Jones still shooting threes?
He did hit a huge one midway through the second half against UCF, but that was his only make in eight attempts. Jones’ air-ball of a wide-open corner three with two minutes left set up the UCF fast break that would have sealed the game for the Knights if Aubrey Dawkins hadn’t fumbled the alley-oop.
“They were sagging off me and trying to stop the other guys from attacking the hoop so much, but my teammates trusted in me to take those shots,” said Jones. “I just wasn’t able to knock ’em down tonight. If the opportunity is there again, I’ll definitely be taking those shots again. My teammates and coaches continue to trust me.”
Jones doubled down on that statement moments later.
“That’s what my team needs to be able to win. They’re going to need me to step up that side of my game, and I’ll continue to take those shots.”
Good on him for believing in himself, but hearing that has to be giving Duke fans terrifying flashbacks to Trevon Duval’s 16 shots in last year’s Elite Eight loss to Kansas while Marvin Bagley III had one field-goal attempt in the final 14 minutes. The Jayhawks made it their mission to stop Bagley and decided if Duval was going to beat them, so be it.
Substitute Williamson for Bagley and Jones for Duval, and that’s exactly what Duke should expect to see out of defenses for the rest of the tournament.
But if the 7’6″ Fall and UCF’s entire defensive focus couldn’t keep Williamson from finishing with 32 points and 11 rebounds, how will Virginia Tech’s Kerry Blackshear Jr., Michigan State’s Nick Ward or Gonzaga’s Brandon Clarke do any better?
Many of you are probably sick of the national media’s tendency to worship at the foot of Mount Zion every day for the past few months, but he is the most unstoppable force in college basketball since Glenn Robinson and Shaquille O’Neal in the early 1990s.
After the first-round game, North Dakota State’s players kept saying they had never seen anything close to Zion, and they played multiple contests against the NCAA’s seventh all-time leading scorer (Mike Daum).
Bagley was great, but he’s not the tour de force that Williamson is. Even if he is double-teamed on every possession, Williamson’s two-point attempts against two defenders are worth more than Jones’ three-point attempts against no defenders—especially if you factor in the inevitable trips to the free-throw line.
Unless Williamson gets into foul trouble, the Blue Devils need to ride the horse that brought them there. He didn’t come back from that knee sprain to sit idly by while Duke’s guards brick their way out of the tournament.
Kerry Miller covers men’s college basketball and college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.
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