Bobby Hurley isn’t used to losing in Cameron Indoor Stadium, but he’ll do it for a good cause.
In a Devil-off Sunday evening, Duke men’s basketball welcomed Hurley’s Arizona State squad to Durham for a Brotherhood Run charity exhibition game, benefitting the Duke Children’s Hospital. The Blue Devils, however, were anything but charitable on the court, and kept the ball away from their visitors to finish their exhibition series with a gaping 103-47 victory.
"They just busted their butts," said head coach Jon Scheyer after the game. "You can make up for a lot if you're giving it all you've got." Not that Duke had much to make up for.
The fourth minute of the second half put Cameron Indoor Stadium in a frenzy. Freshman guard Kon Knueppel sent a ball with perfect arc through Arizona State’s rim, and the crowd exploded onto its feet for the rookie’s second triple of the half. The buzzer rang for a timeout and LMFAO’s “Shots” filled the waiting period for the Crazies. The game had barely resumed when freshman forward Cooper Flagg caught a long-range pass from a wicked Tyrese Proctor steal that he slammed through the rim for a dunk.
Twenty-two seconds later, Knueppel took one from the top of the arc while a Sun Devil knocked him to his feet — it went in anyway. He made it a 4-pointer at the stripe. Twenty seconds later, the Wisconsin native passed over glory to Proctor, throwing his captain the assist for a triple of his own.
By the time Basheer Jihad finally scored for Arizona State, Duke had completed a 15-0 run and led 56-24. Duke fans waited for under a minute before Knueppel stole the ball from a Sun Devil and swished another three.
"He's one of the best guys in the country," Proctor said of Knueppel."When he's hot, we've got to keep finding him. He's confident, he puts the work in and he's gonna make it."
After all that, Knueppel deferred to his teammates. He took to the bench for an up-close view of the 3-point circus that his fellow Blue Devils were about to play out, spearheaded by graduate transfers Mason Gillis and Sion James. With Proctor and Foster on the bench, James took over point for Duke, Gillis by his side. The well-seasoned duo took turns launching triples, as James knocked down 3-of-4 and Gillis completed 2-of-3. They let Isaiah Evans and Darren Harris get involved too — why not share the wealth? — so that both guards scored from downtown.
"It was a chance for us to really get rolling as a team," James said.
All together, Duke went 15-of-23 from the arc in the second period.
In the first half, before the triples avalanche, the Blue Devils honed in on drives to the basket. They shot just 2-for-11 from downtown in that period — Knueppel landed none from outside — but made up for it with 56.5% shooting inside the arc. Flagg and Khaman Maluach split up Duke’s first eight points, using their enormous height advantages — 6-foot-9 and 7-foot-2, respectively — to push through Sun Devil defense and rack up points with a combination of layups, paint scores and a Malauch dunk.
That dunk earned Duke its first points of the matchup in a serendipitous display of Blue Devil rookie talent: Flagg threw the ball to Knueppel, who sent it up to Maluach for a statement start just 15 seconds into the game.
"This is a time to get back to the roots of the value of our program, which is about competing," Scheyer said. "It's about being all-in and then going to earn what you want individually."
Knueppel remained the only player Scheyer didn’t pull off the court in the first 10 minutes of play. In so short a time, this freshman has cemented himself into a critical role for this Blue Devil roster, playing both an assistive and a spotlight role. In his third half as a college player, he led the team in assists and tallied five rebounds, second only to the much taller Maluach.
There’s a lot of fresh talent for the Cameron Crazies to be excited about, but there’s also a lot of credit to pay Proctor and sophomore Caleb Foster, the anchors of this star-powered roster. With a triple each, the pair put up 16 of Duke’s 37 first-half points. Foster led the Blue Devils with nine at the halftime buzzer, and his layup at the very end of the first period put Duke in a comfortable 37-21 position heading into the locker room.
The Harrisburg, N.C., native didn’t slow down in the second half, either. He put up two more triples to contribute to a 60% shooting clip and handed off three assists during the duration of the game, playing his part as an enabler for his teammates as much as a point guy himself.
Even in mustard-yellow shoes, Hurley is Hurley on the basketball court. His frustration was eminent as he watched his team miss the vast majority of its shots; the Sun Devils delivered only a 23.5% success rate on field goals in the first half of the game. The other Devils fared better, as Duke made good on 44.1% of its attempts, its points shared between a long catalog of players.
Hurley called it a "trainwreck."
But he was also quick to say that this exhibition was about more than basketball. In the moments before the game began, Mike Krzyzewski walked onto the court to embrace Scheyer and Hurley together. The brand-new jumbotron played a highlight reel of Hurley’s best Duke moments, and his old coach rested his championship-ringed hand on his former player’s shoulder while they looked up at their shared memories.
"I know how much the Duke Children's Hospital meant to Coach K when I played here, and what it now means to Jon," Hurley said. "So it was a no-brainer for us to want to support that."
"I've been a huge fan of his ever since I watched college basketball," Scheyer said of Hurley. "To have that moment before the game with him and Coach K meant a lot to me."
For Hurley, it was a homecoming and a chance to coach Bobby Hurley Jr., proudly sporting his dad’s No. 11, in Cameron Indoor. From the spectators to the players to Hurley and Scheyer, this exhibition was about taking advantage of sports in the best possible way — for the community.
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Sophie Levenson is a Trinity junior and a sports managing editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.