Maryland fans gave it their best, but it seemed that nothing could distract the Blue Devils Wednesday in College Park.
The students chanted obscenity-laced jeers at the No. 7 Blue Devils. They waved more than 2,400 copies of Jon Scheyer's face when the Blue Devils shot free throws. They called the team's hotel and asked to be connected to the players' rooms.
None of it worked.
And because they were able to block out the taunts, the suddenly surging Blue Devils (23-5, 9-4 in the ACC) put their three-game winning streak on the line against Virginia Tech Saturday at 3:30 p.m. in Cassell Coliseum.
"It's not that bad," junior Gerald Henderson said of shooting into spinning wheels at Maryland. "I've played here a couple times, so you kind of get used to it. You just have to get in your regular routine and knock it down."
But Duke's last win over Virginia Tech (17-10, 7-6), a 69-44 drubbing in Durham Jan. 4, was anything but routine.
The Blue Devils allowed just 13 points in the second half in their first ACC game. Duke's defense, which suffered lapses when the team recently lost four of six games, has started to fill some of the holes that were exposed in the slide. Freshman Elliot Williams has emerged at guard as one of the team's best on-ball defenders, and head coach Mike Krzyzewski was impressed with Henderson's help-side defense Wednesday.
Henderson said the coaches had told him he was the Blue Devils' best help-side defender, but his flashiest defensive plays came when he was soaring in the air.
"He was fantastic on the block," Krzyzewski said of Henderson. "I'm going to talk to him about his other defense, because when he wasn't way up in the air, his defense wasn't as good. But those blocks were huge."
In the second half of the teams' first meeting, the Hokies managed just six field goals on 18 attempts. They converted one 3-pointer in the game, and Duke scored 19 points off of Virginia Tech's 18 turnovers.
After their loss in Cameron Indoor Stadium, the Hokies reeled off five straight wins, including a victory over then-No. 1 Wake Forest. The second half of conference play, however, has not been kind to Virginia Tech, which snapped a three-game losing streak with a win at No. 12 Clemson Wednesday. Now, the Hokies are hoping to build on a marquee win by adding another one.
"Hopefully, this will get us over the edge," Virginia Tech guard Malcolm Delaney said of the Clemson victory. "We had lost three straight, and I'd almost forgot how it felt to win a game."
But if the Blue Devils can get out of Blacksburg, Va. with a win, they will be just the second team in the league to reach the 10-win plateau, keeping alive their hopes for the ACC regular-season title. And not even a few jeers or prank calls have been able to distract them from that goal in the last three games.
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