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Jon Scheyer explains importance of Duke playing best basketball entering postseason

Untitled design (2)by: Sam Gillenwater03/07/23samdg_33
Duke HC Jon Scheyer
Grant Halverson | Getty Images

The most important part of a season is making sure you peak and, in doing so, ensuring you do it at the right time. There’s no point in being your best if you do it at a point when it doesn’t matter. With that in mind, Jon Scheyer is happy to see that Duke is playing its best ball as they closed their regular season.

Scheyer credited his team for how they competed down the stretch following their season-ending win at North Carolina. Regardless of what anyone thinks about the ACC, he knows how tough their final nine games were. That’s why he’s all the more impressed with how they looked during the 7-2 finish to their campaign.

“I think it’s more important what we’ve done as a team and sticking together,” said Scheyer. “I think, in the ACC, the lack of credit we’ve gotten this year? We’ve played, in this stretch since the last time we played (North Carolina), some really good teams. And I’m proud of what we’ve done. Our defense has been Top-10 in the country in the month of February. We’ve been as consistent as anybody in the country down the stretch.”

Duke’s final two losses were more than excusable against the ACC’s two best teams at Miami and at Virginia. Besides that, they beat UNC twice, got revenge on NC State, and handled their business against the bottom half of the league. It’s been impressive too considering their margin of victory of over 10 points per game in those seven wins as they held their opponents to an average of just 61 points.

Still, Scheyer knows what March will have in store for Duke next. While there’s a lot to be proud of, he needs the Blue Devils to understand they’ll arrive in Greensboro with a clean slate. It’s on them from there to decide what they want to do with it.

“No matter how you end your year, the postseason is different,” Scheyer said. “We need to get refreshed…We need to refocus on understanding that the postseason is a different animal. It’s one-and-done time…But the belief is there for us and that’s as important as anything.”