For much of the first half, it looked like Duke had had nine days off. Some credit goes to Cornell for not being intimidated early. Shonn Miller looked great to start the game as the Big Red caught Duke napping in transition several times. Duke was still shooting the ball well, but just looked a little out of sync on both ends. But as Doris Burke pointed out during the broadcast, good teams finish halves strong, and Duke finally spurted out to an eleven point margin thanks to a 13-4 run.
After what I imagine was a fiery locker room where some talk about intensity was likely mentioned, Duke put the hammer down to start the second half. Quinn could do no wrong on his way to a career high 12 assists, and Cornell could do little right on the way to 25 turnovers. Cornell had twelve straight empty possessions and 18/19 opportunites to start the half. Duke meanwhile had 11 layups/dunks in the second half as the Crazies started the "More than Double" chant early and often. Some random thoughts:
- Stop me if you've heard this, but there was a Plumlee injury yesterday. Sigh. Hope he is okay and this was just a precaution. He looked good in his two minutes...
- Every Duke player scratched positively in the box score (including a new career high 3 points for Zafirofsky) led by another confident shooting night from Seth finishing with 20 and Mason missing another double double(18 and 9) only because of playing time. Our PG duo finished with 17 assists and only 1 turnover. Quinn's aforementioned 12 dimes is the most in a Duke game since Greg Paulus (go figure) had 15 in 2005.
- If there is any low light to point out, it would be giving up 9 offensive rebounds and losing the battle of the boards again. Granted Cornell missed 35 shots - so its off reb percentage was an acceptable 25%. But Duke managed to grab only 15% of their misses. It's nit picking, but it's a problem.
- I can't remember ever seeing home games on back to back nights at Duke, so nice to blow the game open and allow 4 guys off the bench to log more than 15 minutes and no player have more than 26.