Miami mauls No. 4 Duke 90-74 in Devils’ second straight loss

DURHAM It was hard for Mike Krzyzewski and his players to put words to the 90-74 beatdown unranked Miami applied in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Krzyzewski frequently started thoughts and stopped without finishing them in his nine-minute postgame address. Both his comments and the ones from his players had a searching quality in their tone, trying to explain how the Blue Devils, in the span of three days, had gone from undefeated and ranked No. 2 to a team with two straight losses and on the wrong side of several historical streaks.

Duke hadn’t lost a home game since March 3, 2012—a span of 41 games. Duke hadn’t lost back-to-back regular season games since Feb. 11 and 15, 2009—nearly six years ago. Both of those steaks involved a loss to North Carolina (the second loss in 09 was to Boston College)—Tuesday’s loss was to a 12-4 Miami team (2-1 ACC) that is less than a month removed from a 28-point home loss to Eastern Kentucky.

But the Hurricanes were never intimidated by these Blue Devils (14-2, 2-2 ACC).

"From the moment we started preparing to play Duke, we were talking about the way they played defense and the way we like to play offense," Miami’s Angel Rodriguez said. "We felt like it was a great matchup, and they were going to allow us what we wanted to do."

Rodriguez made it look easy against the Duke guards, blowing by them and getting in the lane at will. In what Krzyzewski called one of the greatest performances ever by an opponent in Cameron, Rodriguez scored 24 points on 8-of-15 shooting, including a 4-of-6 mark from behind the arc. His backcourt mate, Manu Lecomte, also drove and scored at will, finishing with 23 points as well.

The Hurricanes shot 66.7 percent from the field in the second half and had a 15-point lead with 7:12 remaining, at 83-68. The Blue Devils never cut it to single digits. The rate at which Duke’s guards were beat on the perimeter was almost matched by the rate at which the Blue Devils were beat down the floor by the Hurricanes after missed shots on the offensive end.

As bad as it was on the defensive end for Duke—Miami scored as many points in the second half as Connecticut scored in an entire December game against the Blue Devils—it was nearly as concerning on the offensive end. Excluding of post players Amile Jefferson and Jahlil Okafor, the Blue Devils struggled to hit shots, again. Duke’s perimeter players went 16-for-40 from the field (40 percent) and 6-of-21 from 3 (28.6 percent). This was on the heels of a 13-for-53 (24.5 percent) performance in the 87-75 loss at N.C. State Sunday.

Duke also struggled from the line, hitting just 10-of-20 free throws.

"We're not a very confident shooting team right now," Krzyzewski said. "That's part of being young. When we're playing really well, then adversity hits, where it is not going as well, you start thinking a little bit too much."

Krzyzewski wasn’t down on his team, and there was no hint of anger in his voice.

"I just have felt since Christmas that there is something missing with our group," he said. "I haven't been about to figure out how to change it. We're all on the same page now, after two losses and after getting our butt beat. We didn't just lose tonight. We got our butts beat tonight. In some respects, some of that is good. None of my teams have won here without losing. You just can't lose that much. That's it."

Duke’s freshman trio of Okafor, Tyus Jones and Justise Winslow appear to have hit a wall. Okafor was visibly frustrated with the way the refs were calling the game, and Krzyzewski took him out for three minutes with 5:48 left and Miami up 14. Winslow and Jones shot a combined 3-for-15 from the floor. Jones is shooting 6-of-27 (22 percent) from the field in ACC play, and 1-of-8 from 3-point range. He has largely been a nonfactor since the Wisconsin game on Dec. 3rd.

After that 80-70 road win against the then-No. 2 Badgers, the storyline surrounding Duke was how poised and efficient the team was. There was nothing but positive press, and the Blue Devils were making it look easy.

"Everybody has been praising us," Quinn Cook said. "We’re so young and naive. We haven’t played with the same type of aggression and sense of urgency since Wisconsin. Coach had been warning us about it this whole time."

In the next breath, Cook insisted that the Blue Devils would be fine, that they were going to figure it out. He said it in that same searching tone the Krzyzewski spoke in, too. Any assertiveness behind those words was temporarily lost, along with Duke’s confidence.

"When you have a group of youngsters you're trying to cram in three or four years of stuff in one year, so, this loss is like a year," Krzyzewski said. Then he added a few quick, incredulous laughs.

There wasn’t much else he could do.

This story was originally published January 13, 2015 at 11:30 PM with the headline "Miami mauls No. 4 Duke 90-74 in Devils’ second straight loss."