The Virginia basketball team fell behind early and spent the rest of the night grinding back into striking distance on the scoreboard, but Duke had an answer every time the Hoos made a move. The Blue Devils eventually won 81-71, while shooting well above their season average from 3-point range.

The Double Bonus is back for a closer look.

General Thoughts

The 3-point shooting from both teams proved to be a complete flip from the first meeting in Durham, but Duke’s night was mind-numbing. The visitors made their first five triples, 8 of 11 in the first half, and 13 of 21 overall. That’s an impressive 61.9% and miles ahead of their now season-long 32%. With that said, I counted 11 of Duke’s 3-pointers as uncontested (3) or semi-contested (8) shots. Even factoring in the game plan to jam the lane and make the Devils make jumpers, that’s a lot of rhythm looks to give a high level team.

Duke didn’t switch every screen one through five (all five players switching) as often as it did in the first game, though it did still switch screens quite a bit. Virginia did a fairly good job of attacking those switches for most of the night (one way is below). On the other hand, I noted in the most recent AskLandis.com ‘Ask The Sabre’ article that I was curious to see how much UVA chose to switch assignments on defense in the rematch. The answer? Not much at all. For the most part, Virginia played straight up Pack-Line Defense with limited switches.

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