A mantra John Danowski has carried throughout his career covers 11 letters, two words and a huge dollop of uncertainty.

Nobody knows.

It’s all-encompassing phrase, an acknowledgment that whatever internal issues a team has, it is usually evaluated on the one series of external events open for everyone to see — games.

And sometimes, those results are so all over the place that maybe even the coach doesn’t know. This is where Danowski’s latest Duke team enters the picture. A week after a comeback from an eight-goal halftime deficit fell short, the Blue Devils (8-3) scored twice in the first half and then dominated the final 30 minutes in a 14-7 defeat of Towson last weekend.

“We practice great,” Danowski said. “We don’t have bad practices. Great effort, and the guys care deeply. It’s just, sometimes, we don’t play very well in games. And, sometimes, we play really well in games.”

The words look a bit flip, but they’re not intended that way. Duke has played well and lost (Penn). It has played well and won (Denver). It has played sloppy and lost (Jacksonville and especially Loyola). And it has scrambled its way out of forgettable first-half showings and won (Vermont and Towson).

All of that has happened even before Duke’s six-game ACC schedule, which begins Saturday at Syracuse. It makes the Blue Devils oddly enigmatic — certainly not perceived as a juggernaut like at this time last season, even if that edition of Duke ultimately showed itself to be a good team capable of winning tight games but not a great one that could claim a title.

Nobody knows if Duke is a team that really can turn it on for 30 minutes at a clip, and nobody knows when doing so will be enough. The losses, Danowski said, magnify everything. Film is watched differently, more emotionally. Fundamentals are scrutinized again and again. Practice plans are questioned.

What is certain is Duke has been outscored 14-4 in the first half of its last two games, then outscored its opposition 20-5 afterward. How to make sense of that?

“If I had told you before the [Loyola] game you’re going to win the second half 8-2, you would have said, ‘Oh, coach, how much did we win by?’” Danowski said. “I didn’t tell you we’d be down 10-2 at half. We go 8-1 in the third quarter against Towson. We scored two goals in 30 minutes, and then we scored three goals in a minute and 40 [seconds] to start the quarter. I can’t explain that.”

If there is one thing knowable about this Duke team, it is whom its offense flows through. Sophomore Brennan O’Neill (32 goals, 10 assists) is averaging 10 shots a game, and his 110 on the season are more than twice as many as the 53 both Dyson Williams and Nakeie Montgomery have taken.

That’s atypical for the Blue Devils. O’Neill took only 20.6 percent more shots than Joe Robertson did last season (and Robertson still ranked second on the team in shots despite missing two games). Robertson took 34.1 percent more than the next closest player (Brad Smith) in 2019. Justin Guterding had just 20.7 percent more than Robertson the year before that.

(It goes back even further. While leading Duke to consecutive titles in 2013 and 2014, Jordan Wolf took 33.6 percent and 27.3 percent more shots, respectively, than his next closest teammate).

Danowski insists the Blue Devils don’t run set plays for O’Neill, who had six goals and three assists in the comeback against Towson.

“He’s just one of those guys,” Danowski said. “He has such a unique skillset that there’s this fine line between us tinkering too much with it and trying to change him. We’re telling him: Shoot to get hot, shoot to stay hot. We’ll tell you when you’re shooting too much, and I don’t think there’s a guy on the team that thinks he shoots too much.”

Chances are, O’Neill will play a significant role in whatever success Duke enjoys in the next two months. Yet what the Blue Devils are evolving toward remains unclear. There are stretches that suggest a high ceiling, just as there are stretches that hint at the potential of a short stay in May.

Nobody knows, which makes a self-assessment at this stage all the more important.

“If we were 11-0 right now, we wouldn’t be looking at ourselves as critically as we have,” Danowski said. “And that would set us up probably for failure somewhere down the road — a worse failure where we couldn’t correct it because it was too late.”