PITTSBURGH _ There's a lot to be said, given Duke's recent history in the NCAA Tournament and a roster full of freshmen, for getting out of the first round, especially against an opponent that shot 55 percent in the first half and still never really had a chance.
There will also be a lot to be said, behind closed doors over the next 48 hours, about the way Duke played defense at times against Iona on Thursday. Duke's offense was good enough throughout. The defense needed some adjustments.
None of that matters, nor will it matter, when Marvin Bagley III is floating above the rim and Trevon Duval is banging in 3-pointers like the March ghost of Tyus Jones and Grayson Allen and Gary Trent Jr. aren't far behind.
As it was, some halftime tweaks kept the Gaels from getting behind the Duke zone before the Blue Devils could set up while also dialing up the pressure on the perimeter, and the Blue Devils walked away with an 89-67 win.
Offense carried the Blue Devils through the first half and defense through the second, but improvement in the latter will be needed Saturday against seventh-seeded Rhode Island _ coached by a Hurley but not that Hurley _ which earlier dispatched Trae Young and Oklahoma, already removing one star freshman from the tournament.
Still, in the big picture, Duke avoided any hiccups against a team with a lot more experience at this, no small consideration given Duke's youth and inexperience and Iona's ability to score and willingness to get up and down the court.
"This was a game, if we didn't come out like that and didn't come out hard, we could have been down seven, eight points from the get-go because of how they scored the ball," Allen said.
But Duke made its first six shots, which calmed any nerves and made up for any early deficiencies on defense. And there was no shortage of those. Wendell Carter Jr.'s mother said it best at one point, yelling from the stands: "If you're going to play a zone, guys, play it right."
There's a lot to unpack there, from "if you're going to play zone," which speaks to the inherent identity crisis of a Duke team that looks more like some mutant Syracuse than anything in Duke's proud tradition, to the imperative to "play it right," which was an assessment Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski shared, in the first half at least.
Beating Duke upcourt before the zone could get set over and over again, the Gaels did what they had to do on offense to pull off the upset but facing Duke's astronomical height advantage needed some help on defense _ cold shooting, or a rash of turnovers. They didn't get it. And the adjustments to Duke's zone held the Gaels to a single 3-pointer in the second half as Duke rolled along comfortably.
Still, and this will be true from now until Duke is done, whenever that may be, when Duke's NBA guys are playing like NBA guys, when the big guns are firing, there's not much Iona or anyone else can do about it.
"We tried to throw a lot of things at them and they responded in a different way," Iona coach Tim Cluess said.
There may not be a team in the tournament that can muster this much firepower on command, inside and outside. That has the potential to make up for a lot of ills, defensive and otherwise. If Duke was going to shoot (and dunk) like this, Iona was never going to have much of a chance, no matter what the Blue Devils did on defense. But that's going to be less and less true as the tournament goes on. Offense will only carry Duke so far.
Being in the zone may have trumped playing the zone well Thursday, and may again Saturday, but at some point soon it won't.
