Battered and bruised Duke fights back to beat Georgia Tech.
Watch and wait mode for Jeremy Roach and Mark Mitchell
Down two starters, facing a second-half deficit against a team whose shooting never regressed to the mean, Duke was in big trouble Saturday evening against Georgia Tech.
The Blue Devils used some old reliables to come from 10-points down to pull off an 84-79 win; a loud Cameron crowd, an aggressive defense that turned live-ball turnovers into instant offense and some crucial 3-point shooting.
About those injuries. Mark Mitchell didn’t dress out. Something about a strained knee. Jeremy Roach--in the middle of a dominant game--went down with a right leg injury, tried to come back but lasted only a few seconds.
Nothing like seeing your senior captain on the floor writhing in the pain.
No update immediately available on either.
The first half was more than a little strange. Georgia Tech made one foul shot, had one offensive rebound, while Duke had one turnover.
And the game was tied, 39-39. How could that happen?
Simple. Georgia Tech came into game hitting just under 30 percent of their 3-pointers. They hit 8 of 14 in the first half, including one banked in from an angle where no one tries to bank in a 3-pointer.
“I thought they hit some pretty tough shots,” Jon Scheyer said. “Some of that was on us but also you’ve got to give them credit. That’s the best they’ve shot from 3 recently. I thought they hit some really tough shots in the paint.”
Scheyer added that he thought his team over-reacted to Tech’s hot shooting.
Duke actually led by double digits at 28-18, with 9:20 left in the half. But a pair of Tech triples quickly made it 29-26, then another tied it at 31, then another put the visitors up 35-32.
That’s four 3-pointers in 5:31.
Didn’t he have 14 points in the first half?
Kyle Filipowski had 14 points in the first half
But it was a pretty inefficient 14 points. Filipowski made 4 of 13 from the field, 5 of 9 from the line in the first half.
And, yes, Tech has some rim protectors, especially Tafara Gapare, a 6-9 sophomore from New Zealand.
He’s “twitchy,” as the kids say.
Tech exploded out of the locker room beginning the second half. Filipowski scored first but Tech responded with an 8-0 run to go up by six. Then it was eight at 51-43, then double digits at 53-43.
It seemed like everything they shot, from any distance, at any angle found the basket.
“Those are definitely big plays obviously” Ryan Young acknowledged. “It’s hard when you’re game-planning and not expecting something to happen. But that happens, even in our building because it’s a big stage.”
Then it was Duke’s turn to explode. Filipowski knocked down a huge 3-pointer then Jaylen Blakes made perhaps the biggest play of the game, a block on Miles Kelly that led to a Roach basket in transition and subsequent foul shot.
Scheyer called that play “huge” and that may have been an understatement.
Then Filipowski got a steal and went coast-to coast, Tech’s lead trimmed from 10 to two in just 58 seconds.
Game on.
Scheyer said the live-ball turnovers were Duke basketball.
“We’ve gone back to that this year, being more disruptive, active hands on defense. I thought our pressure bothered them. The turnovers changed the game.”
Blakes wasn’t the only veteran reserve to make a big splash for Duke. With Mitchell out Duke started Filipowski and four guards. But they tried some lineups with Filipowski and Ryan Young and it worked so well they kept at it.
“You trust him out there,” Scheyer said of Young. “We just didn’t have the rhythm offensively [with four guards] so we went big and once we went big with Ryan and Flip in together, it was just too good. We had to keep it rolling with that group.”
Young gave Duke a 56-55 lead on an offensive rebound, then halved a four-point Tech lead with a layup that made it 62-60.
Young ended with 10 points, 9 rebounds, 2 assists and 1 block and drew praise from Tech coach Damon Stoudamaire, who singled him out as a difference maker.
Roach went out with 8:22 left, two minutes after his steal and layup, the last of his 18 points. Tech immediately hit a 3 to go up 67-63.
T.J. Power had a two-minute cameo in the first half but in the second half Duke played seven and now they were down to six against a deep Tech team that went 10-deep.
Proctor injured his ankle in the opening minute of Duke’s loss at Georgia Tech and watched from the bench as Tech fans stormed the court.
He remembered.
“They obviously stormed the court on us and we remembered that,” he said. “We didn’t want it to happen again. To go to another arena and watch them storm the court, nobody likes that.”
“We remembered that and took it personally,” Filipowski agreed.
The duo made sure it didn’t happen again. Proctor hit a 3-pointer to make it 64-63 Tech, then another that tied the game at 69-69, then another that put Duke up 72-69, nine points in less than three minutes.
Proctor ended with 17 points.
Young scored four points but Tech closed to 76-74.
Then Filipowski made perhaps the game’s biggest play on Duke’s end of the court, grabbing two of his misses before tipping it in traffic to make it 78-74.
Duke survived one more bullet. Down 79-77 Naithan George had a 3 that would have given Tech the lead with about two minutes left.
He missed. Young scored inside. Proctor made two more freebies, McCain went one for two from the line and that was it.
Not the prettiest win but certainly one of the grittiest. Scheyer used the word “gutsy.”
“You just have to back up on your values and stick to the game plan,” Young said, “trust what we’ve been practicing, trust each other. When teams come in and play like that you’ve got to find a way to win.”
Filipowski ended with 30 points, 13 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 blocks, zero turnovers, shooting 6 for 11 from the field.
“It was a huge win,” he said, “just sending a message out, getting that redemption back, just proving it to everyone, most importantly ourselves.”
The win was Duke’s eighth straight and leaves Duke 4-1 in the ACC, 13-3 overall. Duke doesn’t play until next Saturday when they host Pittsburgh. Hopefully, that extra time off will help the walking wounded and help Duke keep this good thing going.
I'll try to go into this in more detail in the next week or 10 days. But other Duke sports teams seem to be able to get non-grad-student transfers into Duke with some regularity so I. think it's a little more complicated than just blaming admissions. But thanks for a good article idea. :)
Team health just became a concern. Hopefully, both Mitchell and Roach can recover quickly.
Ryan Young and Tyrese Proctor really stepped up.