WASHINGTON—No. 2-seed Duke, 11.5-point favorites against No. 10-seed N.C. State in the ACC tournament quarterfinals, never led in the second half of its 74-69 loss.
It didn’t even tie. In 20 minutes of postseason basketball, the Blue Devils trailed for every second.
For the second game in a row.
Duke, while ultimately earning the first two points, was playing from behind from its opening possession, when sophomore Mark Mitchell tried to pass the ball inside to classmate Kyle Filipowski. But 6-foot-9, 275-pound Wolfpack center DJ Burns Jr. was standing in between them. Burns picked it off with ease. By the time the Blue Devils made their first field goal, a Filipowski layup off a Tyrese Proctor lob inside, more than four-and-a-half minutes had bled off the clock. Granted, the Wolfpack had only scored five at that point, but that number didn’t matter. It was greater than the tally next to “Duke” on the jumbotron. The Blue Devils were playing catch up.
Thursday evening’s game came on the heels of yet another Duke-North Carolina showdown in Cameron Indoor Stadium — one where, in case you hadn’t heard, the Blue Devils never led.
“I just thought they came out and hit us first,” Duke head coach Jon Scheyer said after the loss to the Tar Heels.
“It's happened three games in a row,” he echoed after the ACC tournament exit. The three in question are the Blue Devils’ regular-season win against the Wolfpack in Raleigh, that home loss to North Carolina and Thursday’s upset.
It hasn’t just been those three, however. Slow starts and early stumbles have been a landmark of Duke’s season. It was down eight against Arizona. It faced a four-point halftime deficit against Southern Indiana Nov. 24. Georgia Tech jumped out to an 11-point lead in Atlanta. Against Hofstra, as 15.5-point favorites on their home court, the Blue Devils found themselves down by five with less than four minutes remaining in the first frame after going toe-to-toe with the Pride for 11 minutes. And those were all in 2023.
In nearly all of those games, though, there was a second-half push. Duke came out of the locker room after halftime and hit the ground running. Once conference play ramped up, that trend started to sizzle out.
In Thursday evening in Capital One Arena, the Blue Devils hit halftime down three after a DJ Horne buzzer-beating two-point jumper. Duke had just clawed its way back within striking distance, even taking the lead/breaking even for 1:06. Horne’s shot took the wind out of the Blue Devils’ sails, but they had a chance to regroup. Scheyer had the opportunity to collect his crew, figure out the fixes and get it right.
N.C. State scored six straight out of the break, and when Scheyer called a timeout less than three minutes into the half, his team’s deficit had grown to nine points.
The Wolfpack had an answer for everything. A Proctor layup was followed by a Casey Morsell drive — except he was fouled, and made his free throw for the three-point play. Filipowski’s second-chance points off his own blocked shot were followed by a Morsell dunk after his own 3-point attempt was too hot. Ben Middlebrooks tipped it to the top of the key and Morsell grabbed the rock and took it to the house. Even a single-digit deficit felt insurmountable for Duke — when it could get its shots to fall, its defensive efforts proved fruitless. N.C. State had seven second-half offensive boards, resulting in 13 second-chance points over the final 20 minutes.
Although the two games were just 10 days apart, this was a different Wolfpack opponent. They leveled up for the postseason. The Blue Devils didn’t.
“You can't do the same thing,” Scheyer said. “You have to keep raising your level. That's the thing we didn't do tonight.”
Duke had the luxury of leaving Washington knowing its season wasn’t over. The last time it lost its conference tournament opener, it responded in kind with a run to the Elite Eight.
“Obviously [an ACC title] was still a goal, but the national championship’s the main goal,” Filipowski said.
“ACC tournament’s cool to have, but came here for something bigger,” said senior captain Jeremy Roach. His struggles from the North Carolina game persisted as he only tallied five points on 1-of-6 shooting with three turnovers.
The Blue Devils’ last two-game losing streak was the Arkansas-Georgia Tech road pairing from late November and early December. Duke righted that ship with eight straight wins. This task is a bit taller — and it starts the moment the game tips off.
“[We] just gotta come out like our life depends on it … we just got to go out there and do it,” Roach said.
“[We need to] take what we're getting taught and we're getting yelled at the minute before and actually embrace it and use it for our motivations for these next games,” said freshman guard Jared McCain.
“I can’t go out like that,” he added.
The path ahead is clear: Physical play in the post, a strong opening, increased intensity. How Scheyer gets his team there, or if he does, is still to be determined. For Filipowski, using these two losses is key.
“I think [after North Carolina], we let the feeling go a little too soon,” he said. “We got to remember this feeling heading into next week. We got to remember the Tennessee feeling from last year. If we do that, I'm very positive and very certain that we can go to Phoenix.”
It is March, after all. Anything can happen.
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Rachael Kaplan is a Trinity senior and a senior editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.