Duke’s shift to a 2-3 zone defense against NC State was crucial in the Blue Devil victory. It doesn’t take a particularly keen eye or in-depth knowledge of the intricacies of defensive strategy to notice that. What it says for Duke’s viability come March Madness is a bit more complicated of a story.
Indeed, it would be quite easy to overreact to this lone data point and argue that Duke should fully embrace the 2-3 zone down the stretch, as it has with recent one-and-done teams (the 2015 National Champions and 2018 Marvin Bagley-led squad played a lot of zone in March).