The Duke men’s basketball team may have played its best road game of the season Saturday afternoon against Virginia.
And it still wasn’t enough for a win. A couple of scoring droughts--one in each half--and a highly controversial call at the end of regulation led to a 69-62 overtime win by Virginia.
About that ending. Duke had the ball with 1.2 seconds left, game tied at 58. Tyrese Proctor in-bounded to Kyle Filipowski, driving hard to the rim.
Reece Beekman fouled Filipowski.
No question about that. An official clearly signaled both the foul and the fact that it was a shooting foul.
This is not under dispute, or at least it shouldn’t be.
So the question was simple. Did the foul take place before or after the clock struck zero?
Impossible to be sure in real time. But this is reviewable. We saw a number of different angles on television, all pretty clearly showing that the foul took place somewhere between 0.2 and 0.3 seconds left on the game clock.
Now Filipowski did not have a good game. Far from it. He didn’t score. So, there’s no guarantee he doesn’t miss both foul shots.
But he made two at Boston College with the game on the line and I’m reasonably certain he would have made at least one at Virginia.
We’ll never know. After a lengthy review of one would assume the same or similar footage we all saw, the officials ruled that the foul occurred after regulation ended and we went to overtime.
“[The officials] told me after the fact that the call was made after the buzzer," Jon Scheyer said. "You can see the ball left his hands before 0.00. I don't exactly know what the rule was. The call was made so I don't know how the call can get taken away. But again, I just would like clarity. Hate it for our guys. You have a chance to win. And to attack the basket like that, that’s a big-time move. To not be rewarded, I feel for [Filipowski].”
“I thought it was at least going to be a foul or goal-tend or something,” Jeremy Roach said. “But obviously you can’t put the game in the refs’ hands.
Duke got a lot from its perimeter in Charlottesville. Jeremy Roach scored 12 of Duke’s first 14 points and ended with 16; but he did have five turnovers.
Proctor had a bounce-back game from Monday’s Miami nightmare, with 14 points and four assists.
Dariq Whitehead made more than a cameo in his first game back after missing four games with a lower-leg injury. He gave Duke a solid 10 points and four rebounds in 25 minutes.
And Jake Grandison played his best game in a Duke uniform. He scored 11 points, including a baseline 3-pointer that tied the game at 58-58, with 50 seconds left.
But Duke’s all-freshman starting front court of Filipowski, Dereck Lively II and Mark Mitchell combined for five points on one of10 shooting from the field, three of six from the line. Mitchell and Filipowski did grab eight and six rebounds respectively. And veteran Ryan Young might like to have those two missed field goals back. But he did grab 11 rebounds and made all six of his foul shots.
Pack-line defense? Merits thereof? Not really a discussion I want to have right now. But 16 Virginia fouls in 45 physical minutes? Maybe they’ve just mastered it.
Duke led most of the first half. Three-pointers by Proctor put Duke up 17-11, than 20-13.
But Duke got stuck on 20 for four minutes, turning it over four times in five possessions.
Yes, that old bugaboo reared its ugly head again. Duke had 22 turnovers, Virginia 14 and it you want a non-end-of-game-explanation for Duke’s loss, that’s a good place to start.
“It’s not going to be a winning recipe for us,” Scheyer said of the turnovers. “And that’s on us. Our guys, we need to do a better job of that. You have to be really disciplined when you’re playing a Virginia team. And if you’re not, if you leave your feet and fall forward, they’re going to be there waiting to take a charge. Their ball pressure is really good so it makes you put your head down a little bit more than you would like.”
Roach said Duke has to be stronger with the ball, Proctor noted ball movement left something to be desired.
Virginia still couldn’t catch up. Not yet. Maybe Duke dodged a bullet. Or maybe Duke missed a chance for an early knock-out.
Duke ended the half with one final turnover, a charge on Whitehead and Reece Beekman ended the half with a dunk.
Duke 27 Virginia 25.
Virginia outscored Duke 10-3 to start the second half and opened up a 35-30 lead.
But Whitehead scored all 10 of his points in 3:15 and Duke was back up 51-46, with just over nine minutes left and huge, perhaps season-changing upset looming.
Duke wouldn’t score again for almost five minutes.
Turnovers, missed shots, bad fouls, pretty much the standard recipe for not holding on to a late lead.
Duke actually trailed 58-53 but a Roach layup, that Grandison 3 and some timely defense put Duke one botched call from a chance to win.
Overtime? Coming back from those final seconds is a tough ask for anyone, a really tough ask for a young team on the road against a top-10 opponent.
Still Duke cut a five-point deficit to 63-62, with 1:11 left. But Armaan Franklin hit a 3 late in the shot clock, Duke turned it over again and that was that.
The loss drops Duke to 17-8, 8-6 in the ACC.
I know there’s a narrative out there that Jon Scheyer is too nice for this job. But when he was asked what lessons he could take from this close loss, his response was “It’s hard for me to take lessons right now. I’m pissed for our guys. I’m pissed that we were right there and we weren’t able to come away with a win.”
No more Mister Nice Guy?
We’ll see.
Four of Duke’s next five games are at home, struggling Notre Dame and Louisville and payback opportunities against Virginia Tech and NC State. Time is running out for Duke to burnish its NCAA credentials and Duke would likely have to run the table to get back to a four-or-five seed. But the opportunity is there in a season that still could go in either direction.
Sidebar. Saturday night, while I was trying to figure out what to write, I watched the end of the 76ers-Nets game. Sixers up 3, Nets hit 3-pointer at buzzer. Did it count? Officials go to monitor, take 15 seconds to confirm that ball was in shooter's hands when clock hit zero and wave off shot. 15 seconds and they got it right. ACC officials take three minutes and get it wrong. I realize NBA officials miss calls but their system seems to work a lot better than ours.
Haven't heard anything. it would make sense but it also might require having folks manning the monitors from noon to midnight on a Saturday and I suspect the ACC would scream poverty, lack of resources, bad internet, dog ate my homework, something to deflect responsibility.