Resounding win in ACC tournament has Duke on happy note again
Mike Krzyzewski didn’t give his Duke Blue Devils time to stew over Saturday night’s beatdown at North Carolina.
Using the verb he chose to describe that game, the rival Tar Heels ‘kicked’ Duke 91-73, sending the Blue Devils back to a .500 record entering the ACC tournament.
For some Duke teams of the past, that could have meant an impromptu practice awaited the players when they got off the bus after the short ride from Chapel Hill.
Krzyzewski took the opposite approach.
“We came back and had a short meeting,” Krzyzewski said, “and said, look, we just got beat badly, and that’s it. That’s the end of that season. We’re not going to show tape. We’re not going to do anything. Let’s start anew.”
The Blue Devils looked refreshed in their ACC tournament opener on Tuesday, drilling 3-pointer after 3-pointer to blast Boston College, 86-51, at the Greensboro Coliseum and keep their season alive for another day.
Taking this approach with this, Krzyzewski’s 41st Duke team, may not have been entirely necessary. These Blue Devils, for what they lack in NBA-ready talent, haven’t been short on work ethic or slowed by bad attitudes.
Still, the weight of that lopsided loss where the Tar Heels ran up a 26-6 lead and cruised could have sapped Duke’s fight. That loss left Duke with its third three-game losing streak of the season.
On Tuesday against the ACC’s worst team, the Blue Devils (12-11) played fire and togetherness to make sure there wouldn’t be a fourth loss in a row.
“Duke was very, very hungry today.” said Scott Spinelli, Boston College’s interim coach.
The Blue Devils passed the ball well on offense, finishing with 22 assists on 32 field goals. They hit a season-high 15 3-pointers on 32 attempts. While losing to Louisville, Georgia Tech and UNC to end the regular season, the Blue Devils hit a meek 16 of 74 3-pointers.
“In a couple of the timeouts when we made those shots,” Krzyzewski said, “what we reminded the guys of is, when the guy makes that extra pass, you almost always hit that shot because the guy receiving it, it’s like, the other guy said, `Look, I have confidence in you to hit it. I could have taken it but I have confidence in you.’
“Those are beautiful plays, and we haven’t had a lot of them, but we had a good number of them today.”
Freshman guard DJ Steward hit three 3-pointers over the game’s first 11 minutes, the third of which put the Blue Devils up 23-12. He didn’t hit another one the rest of the game, but he finished with a team-best 17 points.
“You know, we’re all locked in,” Steward said. “We know it’s win or go home right now, so we’re all just going out there and being confident, just laying it all on the line right now.”
Senior guard Jordan Goldwire drilled four 3-pointers to score 12 points. Every Blue Devil that hit a 3-pointer — and there were six of them — made at least two.
They played like they didn’t have any weight on their shoulders, even though they face a tough road this week to getting Duke to the NCAA tournament. If the Blue Devils fail, they’ll miss the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1995.
“I think the most important thing for us was to just always remember that feeling in the back of our head of us losing (at UNC),” Duke freshman center Mark Williams said, “and at the same time acknowledge it’s the ACC Tournament, it’s a new season, and we’ve got to win one game at a time.”
So No. 10 Duke has one win down and four more to go over the next four days.
Next up is No. 7 Louisville, which beat the Blue Devils 70-65 at Louisville on Jan. 23 and 80-73 in overtime at Durham on Feb. 27.
Steward, Goldwire and the rest of the Blue Devils backcourt must contend with senior Carlik Jones, the graduate transfer guard from Radford who made first-team, all-ACC this season.
“Jones, in the last four or five minutes of a game, is probably the best in our conference in managing the game and making the right decisions,” Krzyzewski said.
The Blue Devils need to be the players making those decisions, and executing the plays at the right times, to reverse things against the Cardinals. Both regular-season games came down to the final minutes with Duke falling just short.
That’s been a theme in this rare season of struggles for the Blue Devils. They’ve made those plays a few times, but mostly didn’t.
On Tuesday, they made all the big plays early to turn the game with Boston College (4-16) lopsided.
That’s a good first step, with much more work to be done.