With a late defensive lapse costing Duke dearly in Wednesday's 70-68 loss to No. 6 Wake Forest, head coach Mike Krzyzewski responded in a predictable fashion-by running his squad through a physical, man-to-man defensive practice on Friday.
The result? No. 1 Duke came out hard and fast on the defensive end in its first game after falling to the Demon Deacons, forcing 17 Virginia turnovers in the first half to slam the door early on the Cavaliers.
"Friday was all defense," Krzyzewski said. "It wasn't like animal drills, where you're making up drills for toughness. It wasn't that kind of practice, but it was a real hard man-to-man defensive practice."
The practice was so physical that Gerald Henderson and Nolan Smith both came out of the practices with soreness in their backs, but the backcourt duo and their fellow Blue Devils looked more spry than sore early in the first half. Active in the passing lanes and the paint, Duke forced five turnovers before the first media timeout at the 15:51 mark.
Two of those Cavalier giveaways were in the form of charges committed by freshman forward Sylven Landesberg, who scored Virginia's first five points. Because of the early foul trouble, Virginia head coach Dave Leitao summoned Landesberg-the Cavaliers' leading scorer coming into Sunday's contest at 17.1 points per game-to the bench after the second foul, where he sat for the next 6:13 of the game. By that point, the Blue Devils had established a commanding 28-11 lead and were en route to a rout of the Cavaliers.
"The thing that we didn't want to do with [Landesberg] was have the guy who was guarding him foul him," said Krzyzewski, who tapes a piece of paper recording how many charges each player has taken in the locker room. "As long as you don't foul him, you've got a chance to get a charge, and we did. We took some really good charges today."
But Duke's persistent ball pressure also contributed to the six steals and 17 first-half turnovers, with Henderson notching two steals of his own during a commanding run that began just before Landesberg returned to the game with 10:16 remaining in the first half. After knocking down a pair of free throws, Henderson picked off a Virginia cross-court pass near the half court stripe and went the other way for a ferocious breakaway dunk. On the Blue Devils' next offensive possession, guard Jon Scheyer missed his shot but Henderson stripped the rebound from Virginia's Jeff Jones near the basket and flushed it down to put Duke up by 20 points with 9:07 to go in the first.
"I thought that I was aggressive," Henderson said. "I thought that as a team [against Wake], we weren't aggressive defensively, but today, our defense had a lot to do with our offense. A lot of guys got steals, a lot of guys got out on fastbreak... that's important for us, to be aggressive on defense, because that gets you in an aggressive mindset on offense."
With Wake Forest falling to ACC cellar-dweller Georgia Tech on Saturday, the Blue Devils knew that they had a chance to retain their one-game edge over the rest of the conference with a win against Virginia. That fact wasn't neglected by Smith, who attributed much of Duke's success Sunday to their tight defensive pressure and the offense that sprung from it.
"We knew that we had a game lead on the rest of the field in the ACC, so we had to keep our foot on the gas and keep pushing it," Smith said. "It started on defense, just playing defense and the passing lane, and then on the offensive end, getting aggressive and getting the shots off."
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