COLLEGE PARK, Md. - For the fourth straight game, the Blue Devils left the court with heads hung low after another tough loss.
No. 16 Duke (18-7, 5-6 in the ACC) fell to Maryland (18-7, 4-6) 72-60, giving the Blue Devils their longest losing streak since 1996.
"It doesn't feel good," co-captain Greg Paulus said. "It's not panic mode, but we have to get better. We're not playing well enough, it's that simple."
Despite falling behind by as many as 20 points in the first half, the Blue Devils still found themselves in the position to win the game late in the second period. But their offensive inconsistency and Maryland's athleticism doomed Duke down the stretch.
After Dave McClure's layup cut the Maryland lead to six with 8:02 remaining, the Blue Devils squandered their opportunities amidst a bevy of turnovers and missed chances. During a two and a half minute stretch in which Paulus and freshman Jon Scheyer missed shots and three different Blue Devils committed fouls, Maryland regained control with a 10-2 run.
Following a pair of Mike Jones jumpers and a miss by Paulus, Ekene Ibekwe buried the Blue Devils with a back-breaking dunk that gave Maryland a 68-54 lead with 3:32 to go and brought a sold-out Comcast Center to its feet.
"We didn't rush anything, we just did what we had to do," said Ibekwe, who scored 13 points and pulled down seven rebounds. "To win this game against Duke in this big rivalry, we knew we had to get up for this game."
Paulus opened the game with five quick points, but things quickly went awry for the Blue Devils over the next 10 minutes. The Terrapins took advantage of Duke's shaky ballhandling, turning nine turnovers into 17 points while shredding Duke's defense en route to a 29-4 run. A D.J. Strawberry dunk with 8:54 left in the first half put Maryland up 20-the Blue Devil's largest deficit of the season.
"Our turnovers killed us," Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "[Maryland] does one of the best jobs of turning turnovers into points."
With DeMarcus Nelson on the bench for most of the first half after picking up three quick fouls in the first seven minutes of play, Duke had to shorten its already-shallow bench.
With the Blue Devils short-handed, Maryland scored 26 of its 40 first half points in the paint, seven of which came off of offensive rebounds.
"Our team defense and transition defense could have been better, and we gave them too many second-chance shots," Nelson said. "That's something you don't usually see from a Duke defensive team."
Duke managed to creep back into the game with a 15-4 run that cut Maryland's lead to nine with three minutes to play in the first half and lingered within striking distance of the Terrapins for the rest of the game.
Although they came out strong in the second period, the Blue Devils ultimately could not cut the deficit to less than six points.
McRoberts fueled the near-comeback with a game-high 20 points on 9-of-13 shooting in 37 minutes of play.
In the midst of Duke's longest losing streak since the 1995-96 season-when the Blue Devils went 18-13 and lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament-Krzyzewski reflected on the team's youth and how it may be influencing the Blue Devils' current skid.
"Sometimes the responsibility that they take when they have a loss, or those kinds of losses, can have an impact on the next game," Krzyzewski said. "Some of the time, when you're younger, you keep it longer. [When] you're older, and you've been through it, you try to get rid of it because you know that's the way to do it. There's a lot of things that our kids have to learn."
NOTES:
With the loss, Duke is in jeopardy of dropping out of the AP Top 25 poll for the first time in 200 weeks, which would end the longest active streak in college basketball and the second-longest run of all time.... After seeing limited action since the start ACC play, Marty Pocius played 10 minutes, the most he has recorded since a New Year's Eve contest against San Jose State.... In recognition of National Coaches vs. Cancer Awareness Weekend, both coaching staffs wore sneakers on the sidelines during the game.
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