Duke basketball holds off Virginia, 59-49, to win ACC tournament title in Greensboro
This time, Duke left no doubt, and the Blue Devils left the Greensboro Coliseum as ACC champions.
In a rematch against No. 13 Virginia after a controversial loss to the Cavaliers one month earlier, Duke never trailed and rode 20 points from Kyle Filipowski and key second-half shots from Jeremy Roach to a 59-49 win in Saturday night’s ACC tournament championship game.
Fourth-seeded Duke (26-8) extended its winning streak to nine games to win its league-record 22nd ACC championship. The Blue Devils have won three of the past six ACC tournaments that have been completed (not counting the 2020 edition cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic).
Virginia (25-7), the tournament’s No. 2 seed, struggled offensively and finished with a 33.3% shooting percentage.
“Jeremy, he had 19 (points) in the second half,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “He just willed us. He just absolutely willed us. And Flip (Filipowski) had a look from the beginning that I thought knocked them back with how he attacked the basket and how he was moving. It was just at a big-time level.”
Led by those two players, Duke delivered a bit of ACC history for Scheyer. He’s the first person to win the ACC title as a player and later add another one as a coach. He’s also joined Duke’s Vic Bubas (1960) and North Carolina’s Bill Guthridge (1998) as coach to win an ACC title in their first-ever season as a head coach.
Duke, which led by as many as 14 in the second half, held a 47-40 lead before Roach, who scored 19 of his 23 points in the second half, hit a fade-away jumper in the lane with 3:20 to play.
Isaac McKneely drilled a 3-pointer for Virginia, slicing Duke’s lead to 49-43 with 3:05 left.
Roach, though, drove through the lane to score while drawing a foul. His free throw with 2:38 left pushed Duke’s lead to 52-43.
Virginia made one last push with Reece Beekman scoring on a steal and layup before Kihei Clark’s basket at 1:09 left the Blue Devils up 52-47.
Filipowski hit one free throw and Beekman’s layup left Duke with a 53-49 lead with 44 seconds left. That was as close as the Cavaliers had been since the first half.
But Roach hit four consecutive free throws and Mark Mitchell added two more in the final 39 seconds to seal the win for Duke.
One month earlier, Duke lost 68-61 in overtime to the Cavaliers at Charlottesville when Filipowski was wrongly denied a chance to shoot two free throws with less than a second to play in regulation and the score tied at 58. The ACC said its game officials incorrectly applied rules by looking at replay and wiping out a foul that was called on the court.
On Saturday night, the Blue Devils scored the game’s first six points to take a lead they never relinquished. All three came on shots in the lane, two by Roach and another by center Dereck Lively.
The message Scheyer told his players was to go get the win. They had to take it and they did.
“Really before the game,” Roach said, “he said go out and take it. Really be aggressive. Don’t let them get comfortable or anything like that. We wanted to be the aggressors the first four minutes, and I kind of wanted to set the tone for this game, and I think I did.”
After leading 24-17 at halftime, Duke pushed its lead into double digits with big shots from Roach early in the second half.
Roach scored eight points, hitting two 3-pointers, as the Blue Devils grabbed a 36-22 lead with 14:35 to play. Roach’s first two made shots of the half — one a 3-pointer and the other a baseline jumper — hit the rim and bounced in the air before falling through as the Blue Devils benefited from friendly rims.
But the teams went through a joint scoring drought as no points were scored for 3:56. Filipowski broke that with a basket inside putting Duke up 38-27 with 9:19 to play.
Notably, Filipowski turned in his only scoreless game of the season in Duke’s earlier loss to Virginia.
“I had probably one of my worst games of the year at Virginia,” Filipowski said. “And just personally going into this game, obviously there was a little more of a chip on my shoulder, just being able to show what I’m capable of against this team. But also there was so much more to play more besides that. I was playing for a championship, I was playing with these guys, and that means so much more to me than just something that I’m wanting to prove individually.”
With Duke up 11, Virginia countered with five consecutive points on a pair of Beekman free throws and an Isaac McKneely 3-pointer that sliced Duke’s lead to 38-32 with 8:33.
But Proctor answered with a 3-pointer from the right corner on a kick-out pass from Filipowski. Seconds later, Filipowski stole the ball and drove for an emphatic slam dunk restoring Duke’s 11-point lead at 43-32 with 7:30 to play.
Duke shut down Virginia’s offense in the first half to build a 24-17 edge at intermission.
The Cavaliers hit only 6 of 22 shots (27.3%), including 1 of 7 on 3-pointers, while turning the ball over seven times. Yes, that’s right. Virginia had more turnovers than made shots over the first 20 minutes.
It took Virginia scoring six of the final eight points of the half over its final two minutes to cut into what had been an 11-point Duke lead. Until that final flurry, Virginia had only scored on back-to-back possessions once previously in the half.
Filipowski scored 11 points and grabbed five rebounds in the first half. But the Blue Devils only hit 40.9% of their shots while turning the ball over six times. No other Duke player scored more than four points.
This story was originally published March 11, 2023 at 10:39 PM.