James Johnson and Erick Green talked today about the Duke game

Johnson on facing Mason Plumlee: “Cadarian Raines and Joey van Zegeren are going to be the matchup with him. We’re going to play him like we’ve played the bigs in the league. I’m pretty pleased with the way my bigs are playing. … He’s a tough matchup for us. …. He’s big, he’s strong, he’s athletic, he can really run the floor and he scores the ball down low and rebounds. He does it all. … We’ll send some help on him when we have the opportunity.”

Johnson on whether Eddie will start:  “It’s still an evaluation thing in practice. … Duke plays a certain way with their pressure on defense and Eddie is a good ballhandler when he can [take] a couple dribbles and get to a spot and rise up into his shot.”

Johnson on defending Duke’s shooters: “They’ve got a lot of shooters out there on the floor, guys that can make shots — Curry and Sulaimon and Cook …. They’ve got guys that can score from all 5 positions. .. They all can put the ball on the floor, they all can shoot the 3. They’re a tough matchup for us at the 1, 2, and 3. …. We’ve got to make all their scoring opportunities tough. We can’t give them anything easy. We’ve got to make all their shots contested and make them earn their shots. They’re very talented.”

Johnson on playing Duke: “You’ve got to have a lot of different guys contribute to the score. They’re just too tough and too talented and too well coached to come out and have one guy try to beat them, it’s just not going to happen.”

Johnson on facing Duke’s defense: “We’re going to have to execute offensively, we’re going to have to screen, we’re going to have to take care of the basketball and not turn the basketball over.”

Johnson on Barksdale: “CJ does a lot of the things that doesn’t show up in the stat sheets. He post defends for us. … The Carolina game, I thought he was so big to us. He fouled out of the game … and it hurt us when he fouled out.”

Erick Green on Marshall Wood: “The kid has so much confidence. You don’t see too many freshmen with the confidence he has. He can really shoot the ball, he plays hard. He still has a little freshman in him … He could be that No. 2, No. 3 scorer for us.”

Green on Duke: “We are getting better, we’ re just not finishing games. If we get this win, it gives our team a lot of confidence. … We’re just not putting the ball in the basket like we used to. … Once the guys start hitting shots we’ll be back in a good situation. … We can really get this win. We’ve just got to come to play. We’ve got to actually play a full 40 minutes because a team like Duke, you can’t play 30 minutes and expect to win.”

Green on the Duke guards: “They’re good guards, all of them 1 through 3. Quinn, a good attacking guard that can shoot it. Seth Curry, contain him because he’s a great guard. And even the freshman, Sulaiman, he’s a great player for a freshman. …. We’ve just got to try to contain them from the 3-point line and just try to [have them] beat us for 2s instead of 3s.”