CLEMSON, S.C. - In the ACC, it is all but impossible to waltz into an opposing gym and blow the home team out. It is true every year, and it is especially true this year.
When Duke built a 24-point lead with 14 seconds to play in the first half, it was just a matter of time before Clemson made it a game. The building was dead, the students were sitting down and the Tigers had tossed up enough bricks to build a house. But there was just no way that Clemson-a bubble team fighting for its NCAA Tournament life-was going to lose by 20 in front of 10,000 of its fans.
So it should have been no big surprise when the Tigers emerged from the tunnel to start the second half and promptly went on a 21-5 run spanning the first 9:46 of the frame. Littlejohn Coliseum was rocking and a lot of visiting teams might have folded.
But the Blue Devils did not collapse. Even as pandemonium reigned in the stands, the Duke players' body language did not change. Even as the Tigers got to the basket for layup after layup-they would finish with 17 layups in the second half alone-the Blue Devils did not hang their heads.
Instead, they continued clapping their hands and patting each other on the back. They continued cheering from the bench and continued doing the little things that keep a team mentally and psychologically in the game. At no point did Duke look like the Tigers' run had caught it by surprise.
"We can't let them see that they're getting to us," point guard Greg Paulus said. "Whether we had it at 20 or at six, we kept control as far as facial expressions, body language. And we believed that no matter what kind of run they were going to make, we were going to be okay in the end."
That type of belief is no small feat for a team that has three freshmen among its top seven players and relies on two sophomores to provide a good chunk of its leadership. And it is also no minor achievement for a squad that recently blew big, first-half leads in losses to Virginia and North Carolina.
And while it is possible to overstate the effect emotion has on a game, Duke's players kept their composure and turned the emotion into big plays. They responded to Clemson's run with an 11-3 spurt of their own to wrest back control of the game.
Although Paulus spent the entire second half struggling with turnovers-he wound up with nine for the game and six in the second period-he still managed to knock down a big three-pointer with 6:07 to play, and also hit his only two free throw tries down the stretch.
And while Jon Scheyer could not get open enough to attempt a shot for the first 15 minutes after halftime, he hit two three-pointers late in the game, punctuating the second one-which gave Duke a 10-point cushion-with a fist pump.
Of course, the Blue Devils had to maintain their composure while Clemson came back because they spent the first 10 minutes of the second half being outplayed. On defense, Duke allowed the Tigers to make seven layups during their 21-5 run, and Clemson missed two more.
"We didn't defend the drive very well in the second half," head coach Mike Krzyzewski said, in the understatement of the evening.
So there was cause for concern-had the Blue Devils played as poorly on defense for all 40 minutes as they did during the first part of the second half, they would have been blown out of the gym. But, at least for tonight, they were able to turn it around, thanks in large part to their refusal to collapse under pressure.
"One thing that our team has is great spirit to win," DeMarcus Nelson said. "All of us believe we can win every game, and you saw that today. Our lead was cut, we got to the point where, on the road with [10,000] people screaming at you, most teams might've lost this game. But it shows the will of our team. We made the plays to get out of here with a 'W.'"
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