Duke Dominates Tennessee Early in Exhibition, Leading 46-23 at the Half / sportsearchers.com

Duke leads Tennessee 46-23 in the Volunteers’ second and final exhibition game before the regular season begins in the first week of November.

How the first half unfolded

Early on (20:00 mark): The teams traded baskets to start, tied at 2-2. Then Duke pulled away. Dame Sarr was the Blue Devils’ standout early, and a big three-pointer stretched the lead. Tennessee had trouble scoring.

Around 15:43: Duke built a 9-2 lead a little over four minutes in. The Blue Devils couldn’t miss, and the Vols couldn’t buy a basket. They also missed two free throws, and Duke was about to complete an and-one. Terrence Hill Jr. went down grabbing his ankle and appeared to be in considerable pain.

Around 11:14: Tennessee was in a deep hole and needed a spark. Troy Henderson hit a three, and Miles Rubin converted an and-one, but the Vols still looked shaky. Juke Harris was playing at a high level for Duke.

The bigger picture

The matchup gave Rick Barnes and his staff a real test. It should show Tennessee what it still has to fix in its last tune-up before non-conference play. Barnes spoke about the team’s needs ahead of the game:

“I think everything’s good. I mean, we know that we’ve got a lot to learn just by being out and playing against somebody else, and there were some things in the first half that were good. We should have scored more points than we did in the first half. The second half, it really got down to when we hit some adversity, we just stopped altogether playing defense and rebounding, just think we’re gonna shoot the ball and think that’s gonna be good enough.”

“We knew that would rear its head at some point in time; we knew that. That’s why I love these exhibition games, because you get a chance to let those things happen. And then, obviously, we’ve got a good group of guys. They wanna learn, but they don’t know what they don’t know right now. There’s some elementary things that we feel like that they should, but that’s not their fault, because we’re learning a whole new system and some of that we’ve got to do better jobs as coaches to teach them some of these things.”

“But their attitudes have been good. I know they wanna be a good basketball team. But we haven’t been able to put the whole team together yet. Obviously, with Tyler (Lundblade), I don’t think he’ll play again tomorrow, but he’s making progress. And Jalen (Washington’s) status, we don’t know. But with that, we’re still trying to figure out a lot of things with this group. But we will figure it out,” Barnes said.

What to watch

Hill’s ankle: His status after the fall is the main concern, and Tennessee already has injury questions around Tyler Lundblade and Jalen Washington.
Tennessee’s response: The Vols need to show they can recover from a deficit, which is the adversity Barnes pointed to.
The second half: Duke has had the better of the game, so the question is whether Tennessee can cut into the lead before the regular season opens.