You would think a 95-54 win would be close to perfect for Jon Scheyer, not quite. Duke routed Western Carolina with Cameron Boozer scoring 25 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, and a block in 23 minutes for the Blue Devils. His brother and fellow freshman Cayden Boozer had 14 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 assists. Four Blue Devils scored in double figures as Patrick Ngongba II and Maliq Brown each added 10 points.

It seems like a spotless victory. Everybody had a great night on the floor against a team they were expected to beat. However, Jon Scheyer, the perfectionist that he is, pointed out an aspect of the game he was not happy with. “I thought we did a good job, but give them credit cuz they had a bunch of offensive rebounds, and that’s two games in a row. I’m not happy with our defensive rebounding. That’s something we have to clean up. I don’t think we’d have to get as many loose balls if we defensive rebounded right away,” Scheyer told the media.

In the last game against Texas, Duke leaked 18 offensive rebounds, while against WCU, that number was 15. Considering the mismatch in quality between both teams, that number probably could have been better. To give the Blue Devils some slack, they had 38 defensive rebounds as WCU missed a lot of shots (50 of 72 from the field), as did Texas (19/59). It gave them many more opportunities to grab those offensive boards.

However, physicality was a problem in that Texas match-up. In the first half, Texas outrebounded Duke 25-11, which included 12 offensive rebounds. While Duke turned things around in the second, it is still a thorn for Jon Scheyer and his team knows that. Boozer explained that the hustle culture is part of Duke.

“We’re not playing the score. We’re playing the game. We want to play hard, be the first to hit the floor for loose balls, make 50-50 balls, 80-20 balls for us,” Boozer said. As talented as this Duke team might be, they still have a pretty young starting lineup. This volatility early in the season is to be expected, whoever the opponents might be. Beyond just the offensive rebound, DScheyer also indicated he wants a more imposing paint presence from his side.

Jon Scheyer Establishing Good Habits Early In The Season

If you remember, last season turned out to be the stuff of nightmares for Jon Scheyer and Duke. Houston scored the game’s final nine points in 33 seconds to stun Duke 70-67 in the final four despite having future No.1 draft pick Cooper Flagg. It was a meltdown few have seen before. Turning the page to this season, Scheyer is focusing on the small things that matter so that a situation like that never arrives. If the squad has all the right processes and weeds out their bad habits, they can go further this season with Cameron Boozer.

“I thought we settled so much. You can’t be a jump-shooting team and win. Now, with that said, if we have open 3s, we’ll take that all the time. But it has to be fighting for the rim, fighting-for-the-paint-mentality. Our 3s are even better if we put more pressure on the rim,” Scheyer said.

Duke slightly struggled from outside in the first half. The Blue Devils went 3-17 from the outside while taking more threes than twos. That did flip in the second half. But their three volume of 32 in this game are still almost 6 more than last season’s average. While spreading out the floor is not a bad idea, it loses its effectiveness if you don’t have a lot of volume at the rim, and better teams can exploit Duke. Scheyer will try to balance those numbers, but this is expected to be an outlier.