If I told you I saw that coming, would you believe me?
Didn’t think so. 96-69 against a pretty good Pittsburgh team? Seriously? And Duke could have won by 40 had Jon Scheyer not started resting his starters in the middle of the second half.
In doing so Duke ran its record to 24-8, seven straight wins.
Duke absolutely exploded out of the starting blocks Tuesday afternoon against the Panthers. Kyle Filipowski knocked down two 3-pointers and Mark Mitchell scored inside and Dariq Whitehead hit another triple and Dereck Lively II made one of two from the line and it was 12-0 less than four minutes into the game.
And Duke kept it up. That Pitt counter-surge that I kept looking for simply never happened. Pitt did cut the margin to eight at 12-4. But Duke responded with an 8-2 run and it never again got closer than nine. It was 28-13 after Filipowski hit his third triple, then 35-17 on two Mitchell foul shots, then 44-26 on a Tyrese Proctor 3-pointer.
Halftime was 48-32, with Duke shooting 63% from the field, 46% (6-13) on 3s.
About those 3-pointers. Pitt coach Jeff Capel said his team gambled that Duke couldn’t beat them from downtown.
He lost that gamble.
“The thing that they hadn’t done in the last three or four games was shoot the ball well from 3. So, our game plan was to try and crowd the lane because when we played them the last time they had 24 offensive rebounds. They made us pay for it, especially early. That knocked us back right away and we never really could get into a rhythm early and for the first time in a really, really long, we got knocked back and didn’t respond.”
Duke did a lot of things well but ball-handling has to be atop the list. Duke had 27 assists and eight turnovers, an astonishing differential against a possible NCAA Tournament team.
Freshman Proctor led the way. First ACC Tournament, 10 assists, one turnover, 13 points, 3 for 5 from beyond the arc. He could have had a lot more assists had he played more than 9:47 in the second half.
Pitt star Jamarius Burton said Proctor “played a tremendous game. He took what the defense gave him. He really picked us apart.”
Capel added that Proctor has “gotten better and better. He’s more confident. He knows who he is. He understands what they want from him, what they need from him.”
Proctor responded the way you would expect a point guard to respond, by deflecting praise to his coach and teammates.
“Coach emphasizes before every game if we need to win a game, rebounding and limit our turnovers, and I thought we did that today. Like you said, guys just getting in the right spots and just knocking down open looks. I think we play our best basketball when we have open looks and guys are just cutting and making the right decisions, and I'm able to find them at the right time, and the rest is on them just making the play.”
Duke apparently dodged a bullet early when Filipowski went down with an ankle injury. It looked bad but he came back in and played effectively, including five plus minutes in the second half. Filipowski scored 22 points in 15:27, 8-10 from the field (4-6 on 3s), 4-4 from the line and somehow not a single rebound.
Scheyer said Duke would monitor his condition but didn’t send out any red flags.
A 16-point lead isn’t a lock, as witnessed by Miami’s near-catastrophic second-half meltdown against Wake Forest in the day’s first game.
But Duke came out and started the second half the way they did the first half. Mitchell scored off the offensive glass, Filipowski scored five points, then a 2-pointer for Roach and 3-pointer by Lively and it was 60-32 and it was a absolute beat-down.
Duke was able to rest its core players down the stretch. No Blue Devil played more than 27 minutes. Maybe that will pay off tomorrow against a Miami team that didn’t secure a win until the final second and had Jordan Miller play 38 minutes and Isaiah Wong 34.
Note the qualifier.
With 8:16 left Duke was shooting 66.7% from the field, 50% (11-22) on 3s and 85.7% (12-14) from the line. Duke’s biggest lead was 36 points, at 90-54 and 92-56 before the bench emptied.
Lively added 13 points, four rebounds and two blocks, Mitchell 12 points and five rebounds, Jeremy Roach nine points and six assists for Duke.
Nike Sibande led Pitt with 17 points.
Pitt’s ended its ACC Tournament run at 22-11. When asked if he thought his team had done enough to earn an NCAA Tournament bid Capel responded “yes.” That’s it.
But Duke’s ACC Tournament run is very much alive and Scheyer loves where is team is right now.
“Each one of our guys, the perseverance, the toughness, just to block out any noise, block out anything else and just stick together as a team, I think that's what you see on the floor on both ends, defense and offense. I'm just proud of that. The offense has probably been a step behind our defense, but our defense has been elite. It's been as good as anybody's in the country, especially down the stretch here, and for us, we just need to know what the winning recipe is. We've learned it, and we need to continue to do that.”
That was fun. I keep making the same comment because I believe it. The team is playing good basketball.
I'm so proud of how this young team has believed in themselves and our coaching staff has done a great job. This defense stands out as one of the best in the country. It's been a long time since that's been the case.
GoDuke!