Zion Williamson masks Duke’s struggles beyond the arc

Duke played another game without Zion Williamson and struggled to beat Wake Forest, proving again how invaluable the future No.1 pick is to the Blue Devils.

Zion Williamson was in street clothes for Duke’s final home game of the season, and the Blue Devils clearly missed him. Wake Forest, which entered the game 11-17 and 4-12 in ACC play, hung with Duke from the jump and nearly won the game in the final seconds as Chaundee Brown’s put-back attempt touched every part of the rim without going down.

This is not new for the Zion-less Blue Devils, who have gone from blowing out their competition to struggling to get by opponents. Since Williamson went down against North Carolina, Duke is just 3-2 and only outscoring opponents by four points per game, far from the dominant squad we saw earlier in the season.

This may be hard to fathom for the casual hoops fan, who knows that Duke still has a trio of talented freshmen on the court even without Williamson. R.J. Barrett has picked up the scoring load in Williamson’s absence, averaging 26.2 ppg over his previous five contests, including 28 in the win over Wake Forest tonight.

Cam Reddish and Tre Jones are also capable scorers, but the offense as a whole appears to be less efficient without Williamson, so the question is why. For starters, Williamson is Duke’s best inside presence by a country mile. Williamson shoots a ridiculous 68.3 percent on the year, with the majority of those attempts coming in the paint, so he is, in essence, putting up eight easy buckets a night on 12 attempts.

The inside scoring has fallen more to Marques Bolden and Javin DeLaurier without Williamson, and neither commands the type of respect that Williamson does. That allows opposing defenses to key on the three perimeter players, who have dominated the shot attempts for Duke in Zion’s absence.

Perimeter play has not been a strength for Duke, and the loss of Williamson has magnified it. Duke entered this matchup with Wake Forest ranked 329th in the country in 3-point shooting, knocking just 30.8 percent of their treys. That percentage won’t increase too much after the Blue Devils went 7-22 from three against the Demon Deacons.

History shows that this is not promising for the Blue Devils. Seven of the last ten national champions finished in the top 100 teams in the nation in terms of 3-point field goal percentage, with the worst (the 2011 Connecticut Huskies) coming in at 226th by shooting 33.2 percent from beyond the arc.

A team this bad at shooting the three shouldn’t be in the national title conversation, but Williamson is so good that he masks a lot of those deficiencies. Williamson’s ability to pick up easy points inside and protect the rim on the other end can wreck the game for Duke’s opponents, making it less important that the Blue Devils aren’t knocking down shots from beyond the arc.

As long as Williamson returns healthy, Duke should be able to contend for a title, but if he’s not his usual self the Blue Devils could find themselves in some trouble. The Blue Devils should still end up with a no. 1 seed, but if they run into a team that is hitting shots from beyond the arc (like Wofford in a potential second round matchup), their lack of perimeter punch could leave Duke vulnerable to an early upset.