On Saturday, Duke took a 40-26 lead into the locker room at halftime and looked well on its way to a comfortable victory against Washington. But the second half was a different story for the Blue Devils, who managed to escape by a final margin of only six.
“It’s frustrating because we played better than a six-point win,” freshman Austin Rivers said. “They hit some shots down the end and a three at the buzzer… but we were beating a great Washington team by 18 points or 17 points late in the game.”
While Duke held its late lead, the second half had an entirely different feel. The Huskies matched their first-half output in fewer than 12 minutes and showed signs of finding their rhythm after being suffocated by the Blue Devils in the early going.
“They’re able to score in spurts and that’s what they did.” junior guard Andre Dawkins said. “They put a little bit of game pressure on us, but we were able to finish the game out, which was good for us.”
Although Washington certainly deserves credit for its improved effort in the second half, a large part of that comeback falls squarely on the shoulders of Duke for failing to close out the game.
After the Blue Devils made a statement on the glass in the first period, the Huskies won the battle of the boards 18-14 in the second. It did so despite losing seven-footer Aziz N’Diaye, who entered the game as the second-best rebounder in the Pac-12, to an injury less than a minute after halftime.
Many of those boards came off missed free throws, which were a major problem for Duke in the second half. The team shot 57 percent from the line in the period, a statistic that could have been far worse if the team did not conclude the game hitting 7-of-8 from the charity stripe.
Another part of the problem for Duke was foul trouble. Washington was partially able to launch its comeback on the strength of its ball pressure, which feasted on a depleted Duke backcourt. Rivers and Seth Curry, Duke’s top two scorers and two of the team’s three regulars capable of running the offense, both fouled out. Tyler Thornton, who started at the point, picked up four fouls of his own.
“You try to be the best defender you can, but trying to be aggressive on the ball sometimes you get in foul trouble,” Curry said. “I need to make smarter plays so I can be there when my team needs me at the end of the game.”
But more than rebounding, free throw shooting or foul trouble, it was complacency that plagued the Blue Devils.
“Suddenly in the second half we’re like, ‘we have the lead, let’s calm down and slow it down and waste time,’” Rivers said. “If we had been in attack mode we wouldn’t have turned the ball over and we would’ve scored more and the lead would’ve kept up.”
Still, some radical lineup moves by head coach Mike Krzyzewski helped the Blue Devils eke out a victory.
Freshman point guard Quinn Cook, who saw the court for only one minute until the very end of the game, was forced in off the bench as Curry and Rivers watched helplessly from the sidelines.
“I wasn’t nervous. I was just cold,” Cook said. “Keeping yourself hot on the bench is kind of hard, and when they called me in I just wanted to not turn the ball over.”
Krzyzewski also turned to Ryan Kelly, who after leaving the floor earlier in the half with an ankle injury, returned in the final minutes despite a noticeable limp, to give the Blue Devils a better free throw shooter in the game.
Despite his team’s failure to stay aggressive until the end, Krzyzewski was still pleased with the overall result.
“The fact that we did that at the end and still won doesn’t negate the really good performance that we had,” Krzyzewski said. “This was a heck of a win for us.”
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