Duke led the final 24:27 against Wake Forest Tuesday night and withstood a furious Deacons comeback for a 75-73 win. That final score includes a meaningless 40-footer at the buzzer but there’s no question that Duke needs to do a better job of closing out close games from the foul line.
Still, a win is a win is win. Duke placed three players in double figures. Jeremy Roach led the Devils with 21 points, 17 of them in the first half. Kyle Filipowski had another double-double, 16 points and 11 rebounds and Tyrese Proctor hit three triples on the way to a 17-point outing.
Wake had its last lead at 26-25 before Roach (6 points) led a 15-9 surge that put Duke up 41-34 at intermission.
“That’s when we’ve been at our best,” Jon Scheyer said, “when he’s just playing instinctively and playing aggressive. We weren’t in a great flow offensively and Jeremy was the guy who kept us going. I liked the look that he had.”
“We didn’t finish the half well,” Wake coach Steve Forbes admitted.
Duke threatened to run off and leave Wake Forest several times in the second half, leading 46-34, 52-38, 55-43, 62-49 and 68-54.
Wake closed to four at 70-66 but Tyree Appleby missed an and-one foul shot; it was Wake’s only miss from the line in 17 attempts. Filipowski hit a 3 to put Duke up by seven with 46 seconds left and then a layup off an inbounds pass to make it 75-66.
“He’s a competitor, he’s a winner,” Scheyer said of Filipowski.
Wake certainly didn’t make it easy for Duke’s freshman star, forcing him into six turnovers.
“I think they were just being very physical from the beginning with me, and I had to adapt to that a while ago. I think just trying to adapt to every type of defender they threw at me, and I don’t have an issue with that. I didn’t get off to a hot start, but I’m okay with that because other guys were stepping up and that’s great because that helped us get the win. Then down the stretch they kind of leaned on me a little bit and I repaid the favor.”
But Mark Mitchell and then Filipowski missed the first end of the bonus in the final seconds and the final score ended up a little closer than maybe the game was.
“I thought we were in pretty good control down the stretch,” Scheyer said. “You wish you could make a couple of those free throws but it happens and we did enough to put ourselves in position to win.”
It helped that the Deacs shot 9 of 31 from beyond the arc after coming into the game shooting just over 37 percent on 3s.
“I think we were fortunate they missed some,” Scheyer said. “They’re no question they’re one of the hardest teams to guard. They make you make decisions. Do you want to protect the paint and switch or do you want to give up 3s? We felt like it was right to stick with our game plan and try to keep Appleby out of the paint. I thought we did a good job of limiting how he can make others better. We had pretty good discipline to make them shoot over the top.”
Duke also out-rebounded Wake 39-32, with Mark Mitchell helping Filipowski with 8 boards and Dereck Lively with 6 to go along with 7 points, 3 assists and 4 blocks.
Appleby led everyone with 27 points.
Duke committed way too many fouls in the second half and Scheyer said Duke was still “learning how to handle different situations.”
Duke is 16-6, 7-4 in the ACC, while the Deacs dropped to 14-9, 6-6. Duke is still undefeated at home, Wake Forest still hasn’t won in Cameron since 1997 and hasn’t swept Duke in the regular season since 1996, when they had a fella named Tim Duncan manning the post.
Scheyer said his team has done a good job of maintaining its focus on the next game and understanding that “each game is worth one. We’ll take it day by day.”
Scheyer refused to rule out the return of Dariq Whitehead Saturday, saying “It’s too early to say for Saturday but he’s recovering really well. He was able to do some work today before our shoot around. We want to make sure he’s fully healthy but also game ready.”
“We knew this wasn’t going to be easy,” Roach said. “We have a bunch of young guys and as the season goes along, we learn different stuff about each guy and learn some new things in each game.”
Good article. I think Flip was worn out from the pounding he took. If he got the calls Hans-Travel got, he'd average 30ppg. Jeremy really took control early and hit some nice 3s.
Now let's beat the Cheats.
GoDuke!