NCAA basketball: Duke Blue Devils 80 Wisconsin Badgers 70 recap and considerations

This was the main event in the ACC/Big 10 Challenge, with Coack K and his Duke Blue Devils visiting Bo Ryan and the Wisconsin Badgers at the Kohl Center. The two teams came in to the game undefeated at 7-0, and they both were ranked in to the Top 5. Of course, everyone of us attempted the duel at the center position between the high rated freshman Jahlil Okafor and Frank Kaminsky, the senior and top scorer of the Badgers.
The first half was very well-balanced, with Kaminsky, who drained a pair of 3’s to open the game. In fact, the first 4 buckets for Wisconsin were 3 points shots, 2 by Kaminsky as I said and the two others by the 2 best bench option for Bo Ryan, Duje Dukan and Bronson Koenig. Duke was very solid on offense in the first period, moreover they shot 15 of 25, which is very good. Okafor was a little upset because he was in foul trouble quickly. But without him, Tyus Jones began to take the leadership for the Blue Devils, as he drains 2 threes to end the first half, with Duke leading by 3, 35 to 32.
Wisconsin started well the second half, with some consecutives 3’s by Dekker and Gasser, but Tyus Jones started his show. The freshman from Minnesota organized well the Blue Devils and took advantage of his outside success to get in to the rack and get to the line. Rasheed Sulaimon was big of the bench with 14pts, but Duke took advantage of the Okafor return after his fouls trouble and just dominating in the paint. Traevon Jackson tried everything with 25 big points, the Badgers couldn’t stop Duke on defense, who shots 15 out of 19 in the second half. Big dunks by Okafor on a superb pass from Q.Cook and by Winslow on a give and go with Okafor punctuated the victory for the university of the state of North Carolina.
The main factor in this game was the defense by Duke on the Wisconsin key players. Justise Winslow and Amile Jefferson were just superb against Sam Dekker and Nigel Hayes. In fact, Dekker and Hayes combined for 9 points on 3/10 shooting, while normally Dekker is the Swiss knife of the Badgers and Hayes is a real improve player from last season : Dekker is averaging more than 11pts on the season, Hayes a little over 12 and 7.5 rebounds. By limiting this key players, Duke had just to countain Kaminsky, who scored 17 but him and Jackson were to alone. Okafor scored 13 on 6/8 shooting and with the 14 by Sulaimon and the 13 by Cook, the Blue Devils scoring was well-balanced.
My MVP of this game is for sure Tyus Jones, who was sensational in his first true road game. The 18 years old guy scored 22, but also grabbed 6 boards and dished out 4 assists, while losing just one ball.

With the collaboration of Alan Guillou