Jon Scheyer believes Duke grew in final moments vs. Clemson

Duke had to fight until the very last tenths of a second in order to win over Clemson this weekend. It took plenty out of the Blue Devils to pull it out in Cameron Indoor and was a performance that taught Jon Scheyer many things about his team.

Scheyer spoke about his takeaways about his team following their 72-71 win over the Tigers on Saturday afternoon. He said he had a plethora of things that he learned about the Blue Devils overall by the end of the contest.

“A lot. A lot,” said Scheyer.

Many of those notes came from what Duke did on the defensive end. He felt their poor performances, including their four losses, have come down to less successful nights on defense. However, while it didn’t always feel like they were doing well on that side of the ball, they actually did and did enough against a quality offense to take it by one in the end.

“Some of those early losses? Even the one last week, although it was different? You’ve got to get stops,” said Scheyer. “No matter what you do on the offensive end, you’re not going to win if you don’t get stops.”

“I looked, though, to the 23-60? The 38% from the field overall? I thought we defended really well,” Scheyer said. “I mean Clemson has been Top-15 in the country with offense. They’ve been the best in our league with offense. I thought we did a great job defending them.”

The stretch where Scheyer didn’t feel like Duke defended well was in the middle section of second half. After being up seven at the first media timeout of the half, Clemson closed the half on a 37-26 run to hold a four-point lead with two to go. Still, during that stretch and by the end, the Blue Devils showed a resolve that made Scheyer proud, especially considering it led to a victory.

“We’ll go back and watch. I don’t know what it was in that middle part. It felt like they were scoring almost every time,” admitted Scheyer.

“Just in that middle stretch? Their physicality can wear you down a little bit. So we had to play through that. It was just a mental toughness thing,” Scheyer said. “It’s about digging deep and they did that.”

Duke was not in a good spot with minutes to go against the Tigers. They were staring a second straight loss in Durham in the face in a third straight poor outing on their home floor. Instead, they rallied, made the late plays that they needed to, and proved themselves even further to their head coach in Scheyer as they move forward.