Duke's 3-Point Shooting Needs to Improve to Win National Championship

Because of how talented Duke is on both sides of the basketball, we're going to have to evaluate this season in a couple of different ways. Duke looks to be one of the best two teams in America, possibly outside of the University of Florida, but there's no guarantee that it's going to win a national championship just based on the talent that it has. 

We know that Duke has a boatload of talent, an elite head coach, and much more. However, that talent is going to have to figure some things out, as it's already facing some adversity throughout the first few games of the year. Duke has played pretty well through the first three games, but didn't look too good against Michigan State. 

Duke lost that game 79-73, and it wasn't able to get much going from beyond the arc. The three-point shot is going to be a big factor in the success the Blue Devils find this season, as teams in this modern era of college basketball have to be able to shoot it from beyond the arc at a high enough clip to swing a game at any given moment. 

However, Duke's regressed shooting after last season shouldn't really come as much of a surprise considering the players that it lost.

The Athletic recently had some great thoughts about the shooting problems, and a lot of it is because Duke lost its four best three-point shooters.

“Through three games, Duke is shooting 30.1 percent from 3 and made just 7-of-29 against Michigan State.

“We probably should have seen this coming. Duke lost its best four 3-point shooters off last year’s team — Isaiah Evans, Cameron Boozer, Nikolas Khamenia and Darren Harris. The returners shot 33.5 percent from deep last year. Duke did add John Blackwell, who made 96 3s at a 38.9 percent clip last season at Wisconsin, and first-year Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje is a capable shooter who will probably shoot it better than he has so far. But the lack of floor spacers was evident against the Spartans, who were not worried about Cayden Boozer, allowing Jeremy Fears Jr. to play free safety and muck up action when Boozer was his assignment,” CJ Moore wrote.

The Isaiah Evans part is a very interesting piece to me, as Evans was just as elite as any other three-point shooter in college basketball last season and was able to knock down shots in multiple ways. 

At the same time, I still do think that Duke is in a somewhat fine spot to figure that out. Scheyer is always going to get the best out of his players, and with this obviously being a problem throughout the first three games of the year, I expect it to be fixed sooner rather than later.