Jon Scheyer explains how ACC Tournament exit helped Duke be mentally prepared for NCAA Tournament

Duke was not entering the NCAA Tournament on a high note. They’d lost their season-finale at home to North Carolina and their opener in the ACC Tournament to NC State. Even so, the Blue Devils head into the Sweet 16 now after responding well to those two defeats.

Jon Scheyer spoke about his team’s improvement in Brooklyn following their wins in the opening-round of March Madness. He said their two losses coming into this tournament humbled them a bit for this one. That pushed them to get after it on the floor in their preparation for the Rounds of 64 and 32.

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“You know, our guys talk about it all the time. They talk about having humility. This game can humble you. I don’t care if you’re a coach, if you’re a player,” said Scheyer. “Our last regular-season game, the ACC Tournament game? You have to have great humility to understand what you have to do better.”

“Clearly all of us had to do something better and, you know, there’s no replicating the work you need to put in,” Scheyer continued. “The silver lining in that was it gave us a week to work on ourselves, to look in the mirror, to not listen to what people may think or were done. I don’t know what was said because I truly don’t pay attention. And I’m proud of our team for just sticking to the work.”

That humility led to a lot of honest discussions about they needed to do to avoid another loss that would end their season. They also led to a new focus on their game, especially on the offensive end, considering how they’d struggled in those final two losses.

“I think it started with a lot of individual conversations. Honest team conversations. Because you know, obviously there’s the work you need to put in on the court,” Scheyer said. “That work doesn’t matter if you don’t know where your players heads are at. What they are feeling, what they see, and what they are getting. So there was a lot of talks started there.”

“For us, our defense was actually pretty good but our offense hurt our defense in both games that we lost. So, for us, we just spend more time working on what’s the next. We just kept saying what’s the next action? Team takes away the first thing – what are we going to next?” said Scheyer. “You’re not going to score 93 points every game but I do think our offense was a lot better in these two games. Then just getting back to how you need each other. You just you need each other in this and I thought we had great connectivity and great practice habits.”

Duke lost 84-79 to North Carolina in Durham and then 74-69 to NC State in Washington D.C.. The Tar Heels and Wolfpack shot a combined 48% from the field and 45.3% from three in the pair of five-point wins.

Now, in the victories over Vermont (64-47) and James Madison (93-55), the Blue Devils have won by an average of 27.5 points by holding them to 38.3% overall and 23.6% from distance. Duke did that while they themselves shot 47.3% from the field and 41.7% from deep with most of that coming against JMU on Sunday.

Duke had to reflect on their losses to their fellow, in-state schools ahead of the NCAA Tournament. They did so by finding that gratitude and, as such, further preparing themselves to earn a spot in Dallas.

“One thing our guys always say is having humility but just having gratitude. You have to be grateful for the bad moments that come your way too. If you handle them the right way, it can put you in a position where you’re even more ready,” Scheyer said. “I thought that’s what it did in the Vermont game and tonight against James Madison.”