Duke found a new way to win that had nothing to do with Vernon Carey
Through necessity and desperation, in the oddest of circumstances, Duke learned it had yet another way to win a basketball game.
The final score says the Blue Devils won 77-63 over Virginia Tech but arriving at that destination is quite the tale.
First, the circumstances.
The No. 10 Blue Devils played their ACC opener on a Friday night in early December. Friday night college basketball games are rare for ACC teams. League games are regularly played on any of six different nights but never Fridays once the usual league schedule gets going in January and February.
But Duke found itself at Cassell Coliseum on Friday night thanks to the ACC’s expansion to a 20-game league schedule designed to provide the ACC Network needed inventory. Welcome to that new reality.
In the midst of this strangeness, the Blue Devils saw Virginia Tech open a 12-point first-half lead. After Duke trailed by three points at halftime, the Hokies scored two easy baskets inside to lead 45-38 a minute into the second half.
Remember, Duke has a 6-10 freshman center named Vernon Carey who is collecting double-doubles nightly and is playing like an All-American.
Virginia Tech doesn’t have a starter taller than 6-7 freshman wing Landers Nolley.
Again, strange days indeed.
So Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski called timeout and made a drastic change.
“I thought we should defend the ball screen better,” Krzyzewski said. “That’s what I was thinking. When we started the second half, we didn’t defend it so I figured we are not going to defend it that way.”
Krzyzewski removed Carey and 6-9 freshman Matthew Hurt. He replaced them with 6-6 guard Wendell Moore and 6-7 small forward Joey Baker.
That gave Duke a lineup with Moore, Baker, 6-2 point guard Tre Jones, 6-2 guard Jordan Goldwire and 6-7 small forward Jack White.
“They had a weird offense, unconventional,” Jones said. “It was a little smaller. They spread the floor with not a lot of time to prepare for them it was hard to adjust with our bigs.”
Rather than using its size to dominate, which it wasn’t, Duke went with the fight fire with fire approach of small vs. small.
And it worked.
The Hokies scored 26 points in the paint in the first half. They only found 10 points from that range in the final 19 minutes after Krzyzewski went with his small lineup.
Virginia Tech made 18 of 34 shots (52.9 percent) in the first half but only 9 of 22 (40.9 percent) in the second half.
The Blue Devils used players capable of switching off their man to beat screens by guarding a different player in man-to-man defense.
““The best lineup for them was No. 41 [Jack White] at the five, which allowed them to switch some things,” Virginia Tech coach Mike Young said. “We didn’t handle that very well, but we will. We will. I think there are very few teams that will be able to do that with size and the personnel that Duke has.”
Defense was a big part of the difference for Duke but not all.
“We were able to figure some things out on the defensive end, where we were struggling with for a while,” Jones said. “On offense, it just came much easier because we started getting stops.”
On offense, the five guards were all outside the lane to spread out the Hokies. Duke didn’t run set plays with that lineup because the well-prepped Hokies recognized them and had shut them down in the first half . Rather, it used drives and dishes to find shots in a motion offense.
The Blue Devils hit 50 percent of their shots in the second half, turning the ball over only three times over the game’s final 20 minutes.
The group played with precision even though they are rarely on the court together, either in games or in practice. Krzyzewski subbed Carey, Hurt and DeLaurier back in for a minute or two here or there but mostly went with the smaller lineup as Duke outscored the Hokies by 21 points over the game’s final 19 minutes.
“It was a lot of fun,” said Goldwire, who scored a career-high 10 points with six rebounds, two assists and two steals while playing 30 minutes and eight seconds. Only Jones, with 36:02, played more for Duke.
“We had to adjust to the lineup that they were playing because they weren’t really too big,” Goldwire said. “Everybody on our team was ready to play. It worked out for us. Everybody was in there fighting hard, rebound, talking. It really helped.”
Carey finished with a productive 12 points and five rebounds in only 14:51 of playing time. It’s only the third game this season he hasn’t produced a double-double for Duke (9-1, 1-0 ACC).
But Moore scored 12 points to go with Goldwire’s 10. Alex O’Connell contributed seven points with five rebounds and a steal in 14:47 of turnover-free playing time.
The Blue Devils adapted on the fly and won in a building where the program hadn’t experienced a win since 2015.
“Those are all toughness things that I saw tonight with my team,” Krzyzewski said. “My team has been good but it’s been different guys. Tre has been the constant. Different guys have stepped up, I’ve got a good group.”