1. For three years CJ McCollum has done everything for the Mountain Hawks. In all three seasons he’s taken over 30% of their shots when he’s on the floor, and this year the 6’3 junior he led the team in scoring, rebounding and steals. Against Duke he was able to consistently take advantage of weak perimeter defense. He drove, he was aggressive, and he caused havoc. McCollum didn’t have his best shooting night, but he scored 30 points and added 6 assists and 6 rebounds. Plus, a couple of his moves against Tyler Thornton are sure to become hits on YouTube.
2. Lehigh isn’t great at getting to the line (123rd), and Duke is pretty good at keeping teams off the line (97th). But on Friday Lehigh attempted 37 FTs. Granted, six came in the final 16 seconds when Duke was fouling. But still, Lehigh hasn’t played a game this season where they attempted more, and Duke hasn’t watched a team take that many since February 17, 2008 (38 attempts by Wake Forest).
3. Lehigh turned the ball over 8 times in a 69 possession game (11.6% of their trips). This shouldn’t be a surprise, as on the season they only turn it over 16.6% of the time (14th best in the nation) while Duke is the 254th ranked team at forcing turnovers. This was the 13th game this season that the Mountain Hawks had single digit turnovers.
4. Mason Plumlee was able to take advantage of Lehigh’s smallish front line. In transition he simply ran straight to the basket and often good things came out of it. He made all 9 of his shot attempts and finished with 19 points and 9 boards. His last shot attempt came with 8:39 left in the game.
5. Duke attempted 26 3-pointers and made just 6 (23.1%). Duke finished the season with 12 straight games where they attempted at least 20 3-pointers, and that included four losses. Duke is the 55th best team in the country shooting 2s, but 315 teams score a higher percentage of their points from the interior than Duke. The only other recent Duke team that was this reliant on the 3-pointer was the 2005 team which lost in the Sweet-16.
