No. 2 Duke men’s basketball is back for one of the tougher contests on its schedule, a road tilt against Clemson. After 20 minutes of play, the Blue Devils lead the visitors 41-35:
Welcome back, Dickie V
Beloved ESPN college basketball analyst Dick Vitale has fought cancer four times in three years. In December, he announced his test results had come back cancer-free, and Saturday night, he took up his old place on the sideline of the court for the first time since 2023.
After a 16-year stint as a coach — starting on the high-school scene and finishing with the Detroit Pistons — Vitale built a career as a sportscaster, at ESPN from the very start. He has been calling college basketball for the broadcasting giant since 1979. Everyone, orange and blue alike, gave Vitale a standing ovation in Littlejohn Coliseum.
Duke in transition
In the first minute, Cooper Flagg stole the ball from the Tigers and lobbed the basketball into the path of a running Sion James. The graduate guard followed it and made a layup, drawing a foul off of Dillon Hunter to make it a 3-point play. After a spurt of energy from the Tigers that put the score at 16-12 in favor of Duke, Maliq Brown caught a defensive rebound off the home team’s first missed shot and passed it to Flagg, who dribbled down the court and, in one quick motion, made a layup. On the very next play, Tyrese Proctor slapped the ball out of Myles Foster’s hands and ran down the court for a fast-break layup of his own. The Blue Devils racked up 18 points off of Clemson turnovers in the first half and made seven of their 10 attempted layups.
In the waning seconds, as Clemson shrank the deficit to just four points, Flagg furiously stole a pass by Jaeden Zackery and dribbled uninterrupted all the way to the other baseline, where he slammed the first dunk of the game.
Foul trouble
Duke clocked three fouls in as many minutes. The third one, called on James, gave Zackery his moment for a nice jumper from just inside the arc. A little over a minute later, Khaman Maluach found himself on the wrong end of a call as well, putting the team foul count at four and forcing a timeout from head coach Jon Scheyer. The fifth came from Flagg, called on behalf of Chase Hunter, who made his jumper as well. If there was a bright side to Duke’s early foul trouble, it was that none of the calls but one — before the bonus — put Clemson at the stripe. Every Duke player who clocked minutes on the court came away with at least one foul, and Clemson was in the bonus with over three minutes to play.
Clemson stays close
The Tigers took just one attempt from deep in the first 10 minutes of the game, and missed it. When Chauncey Wiggins threw it up at the arc in the 12th minute, he missed as well. So did Jake Heidbreder, looking for a chance with under 30 seconds to catch the Blue Devils. But Clemson wasn’t looking to win this game downtown, and the Tigers played to their strengths, making 14-of-18 within the arc. Their field-goal percentage stayed high, wrapping up at 68.2% at the half — 77.8% when not counting threes.
Player of the half: Tyrese Proctor
Duke’s Australian guard opened the scoring in Littlejohn Coliseum with a fast, clean three. After a lackluster couple of games in January, Proctor got back in business against North Carolina and Syracuse, and also started hot against Clemson. His opening triple set the tone for the rest of his production in the first half: He knocked down two more threes and made a couple of layups to put his point total at 16 by the buzzer. He accelerated his own quick-thinking moves with tenacious defense that included two steals. At the three-minute mark, Proctor swished a key triple that stretched Duke’s lead to seven as the Tigers threatened to close in.
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Sophie Levenson is a Trinity junior and a sports managing editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.