RALEIGH -- As the Blue Devils came out of the locker room to begin the second half, the scoreboard showed a five-point Duke advantage, a margin one smaller than the halftime lead Duke enjoyed against Maryland Saturday.
The Terps needed only 44 seconds to knot the score at 43-43. Against the Wolfpack Wednesday, 1:23 elapsed before N.C. State had put together an 8-1 run to turn a 39-34 Duke halftime advantage into a 42-40 Wolfpack lead.
Both times, the result for Duke was the same: a loss in the record book and a mob of screaming fans storming the court. But even though both games saw the Blue Devils blow a halftime lead, they were hardly similar in nature.
"The thing that was better about this game was that they made a run on us and then we kind of weathered their storm and took the lead again," Duke forward Shavlik Randolph said. "To their credit, they played great. They hit big shots - they hit the type of shots they need to hit to win."
Such was not the case against Maryland, where the loss was much more a function of Duke doing things wrong then the Terrapins doing them right. Against N.C. State, the Blue Devils continued to fight, at one point regaining a three-point lead. Wednesday's loss was simply a case of an inconsistent Wolfpack squad catching fire in the second half, going 11-of-20 from the floor, including 5-of-9 from three-point range.
Duke also suffered from an injury to freshman sharpshooter J.J. Redick, who appeared to hurt his foot in a collision with a Wolfpack defender with 8:46 remaining in the game and the score knotted at 51-51. Redick, who in the first half went 4-of-5 from three-point range while scoring 20 points, tried to keep playing, but was clearly struggling and went scoreless for the remainder of the game.
Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski could easily distinguish this loss from the one his team suffered in College Park. Saturday, Krzyzewski criticized his team's effort, while against N.C. State, he did no such thing.
"I don't fault the effort of our kids," Krzyzewski said. "I thought our kids played their hearts out, and that's what we need to keep doing because that's how we'll become better."
Even still, the Blue Devils were far from flawless. They allowed N.C. State to have a number of open looks from behind the arc, especially in cases where Duke's big men were too slow in getting out to defend along the baseline.
The Wolfpack's Clifford Crawford made the most of these opportunities, going 3-of-3 from three-point range in the second half and 4-of-5 in the game.
But the Blue Devils know that, even with N.C. State's lights-out shooting, they still needed to come out and make the second-half statement so characteristic of past Duke teams.
Duke's point guard Chris Duhon was around for several of those games, and knows that this year's squad needs to do likewise.
"We can't let teams in the first few minutes get a run and build confidence," Duhon said. "In those first four minutes in the second half, we need to come out and execute and finish."
Forward Dahntay Jones insists that, following Duke's second-half collapse against Maryland, he and his teammates were cognizant of the need to replicate their first-half intensity. This time, however, their opponent was just too much to handle.
"We wanted to handle it a different way and not let them get out to an easy start, but we really couldn't," Jones said. "We didn't come out with the same mentality that we did a couple days ago - they just made plays."
The lesson to be learned, Duhon says, is that if the other team plays well, anything can happen.
As a result, he says, the Blue Devils need to come out each night and perform at the highest possible level.
"We're a better team from the Maryland game," he said. "Now we just need to get even better."
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