Duke freshman Dariq Whitehead says the Blue Devils are still improving following 77-55 thrashing of Syracuse

The Duke Blue Devils torched the nets from deep on Saturday night against Syracuse, draining 13 of their 26 threes (50%). The Orange were no match all evening for the Blue Devils, as Duke coasted to a comfortable 77-55 win. Duke handed Syracuse their eighth straight loss in the series, dating back to 2019. Following the beatdown, Blue Devils’ freshman Dariq Whitehead spoke with Kris Budden of ESPN about the performance.

“Coach told us to come out and be aggressive. He told us to take our shots with confidence and that’s what we came out and did. We took our shots with confidence and we played really well on the defensive end,” Whitehead said.

Duke stretched their lead to as many as 19 points in the first half, 40-21, but they let Syracuse trim their halftime lead to 13, before heading into the locker room up 40-27. At halftime, Blue Devils’ head coach Jon Scheyer was not happy with the way his team allowed the Orange to go on a run at the end of the first half. He was upset with his players not taking care of the basketball.

“He really got on us for that. He was upset. They went on a run at the end of the half and he just told us to come out with poise in the second half. And that’s what we did. And you know, we upped the lead in the second half, and it paid off,” Whitehead said.

Whitehead feels the team is still developing and growing

The Syracuse game was Whitehead’s third game back from injury. The Blue Devils are currently 11-1 when all their scholarship players are healthy. The talented freshman feels his teammates are still growing and all the pieces are still learning to play together, but he’s excited about their potential heading down the stretch. “This team can be really good. We’re still growing as a team. We’ve still got a lot of things to learn. But for this time in the season, we can be really good. We’re gonna continue to grow and hopefully March Madness comes, ACC Tournament comes, we [can] make a run,” the freshman said.

In the 2022 recruiting cycle, Whitehead was ranked as the No. 2 overall prospect in America coming out of prestigious Montverde Academy (Montverde, Florida). According to the On3 Consensus Rankings, he was listed as a five-star prospect and the No. 1 small forward in America. In the past decade, Montverde has won the high school basketball national crown seven times. It’s considered the nation’s preeminent basketball factory.

Up next, Duke will take on the Louisville Cardinals, who have been playing much better basketball in their past few games. They just defeated the Clemson Tigers on Saturday night, 83-73. Duke and Louisville will face off on Feb. 20th. Tip-off for that one is slated for 7p.m. EST and the game will be nationally televised on ESPN.