‘We weren’t us’: Duke’s shooting struggles leave it one win short of Final Four
Sure, Duke felt good heading to the halftime locker room on Sunday.
Leading N.C. State by six points, the Blue Devils were 20 minutes away from returning to the Final Four if they could maintain that edge.
But that plan only worked if Duke could make shots, something it didn’t do particularly well in the first half.
Instead, the shooting got worse, Duke’s tight postseason defense turned leaky and the Blue Devils saw their season come to a crushing end.
Two years after losing to one Triangle rival in the Final Four, the Blue Devils saw this season end at the hands of another as N.C. State won 76-64 to claim the NCAA Tournament’s South Region championship.
“We weren’t us today,” Duke senior guard Jeremy Roach said. “Sad to say, but credit N.C. State.”
The Wolfpack (26-14) certainly took this game from Duke (27-9). The Blue Devils had allowed teams to shoot just 36.8% over the first seven halves of NCAA Tournament basketball this season. N.C. State shot 73% in the second half Sunday to rally and pull away for the win.
While the Wolfpack was doing that, with DJ Burns scoring 29 and DJ Horne scoring 20, the Blue Devils turned in a woeful 32.2% shooting day. They only made 5 of 20 3-pointers, with only freshman guard Jared McCain making any 3-pointers.
He scored 32 and Roach was next on the scoring list with 13 points. But Roach needed 13 shots, making only 5, to achieve those points. He missed his only 3-point attempt.
“It felt like we tightened up offensively and just weren’t ourselves,” Duke graduate student center Ryan Young said. “They’re a really good team. They deserve to go to the next round. But it just didn’t feel like us offensively.”
The jarring loss derailed the big plans Duke sophomores Kyle Filipowski, Tyrese Proctor and Mark Mitchell, as well as Roach, had when they returned from last season’s ACC championship team that lost in the NCAA Tournament’s second round.
Images of State Farm Stadium, where the Final Four will be played, were posted in their training facilities last summer as the Blue Devils prepared for this season.
Their poor second half Sunday made that impossible and left them in a gloomy mood.
The normally loquacious Filipowski offered only a few clipped responses to reporters’ questions.
“We just didn’t shoot the ball well,” Filipowski offered by way of an explanation.
Proctor didn’t even offer that. He sat alone in a corner near his locker, with a towel covering his head and face, sobbing. A scoreless day that saw him miss all nine of his shots, including five 3-pointers, was too unbearable to discuss.
Mitchell scored six points with four rebounds before fouling out.
The Blue Devils had their chances to separate from the Wolfpack in Sunday’s first half. With N.C. State struggling offensively, Duke built a 27-18 lead when freshman Sean Stewart scored on a lob pass from Roach with 1:39 left until halftime.
After Horne scored a basket and added a free throw, Duke’s final two possessions proved harbingers for the second half. Filipowski committed an offensive foul away from the ball for a turnover. Then McCain missed a 3-pointer and Jaylen Blakes also missed a shot.
Duke’s first two possessions of the second half ended with missed shots, one from Proctor and one from McCain.
But the game changed for good when, with Duke up 35-31, Proctor missed a shot that left the Blue Devils 3 of 9 in the second half.
N.C. State scored the game’s next five points, on Horne’s 3-pointer and then his two free throws, to give the Wolfpack a 36-35 lead, its first advantage since the game’s early minutes.
Though Duke took a 38-36 lead on Filipowski’s basket and free throw with 12:41 to play, that would be its final lead of the day.
The Wolfpack scored the game’s next eight points while Duke had three empty possessions on another Filipowski offensive foul plus missed shots by Filipowski and Roach.
The Blue Devils were never closer than four points the rest of the way.
“I thought it was our offense that hurt our defense,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “I mean, it gives a team, especially these guys, it gives them life when you miss an open three and then you get the rebound and then you throw to them for a fast break or give them run-outs. The whole game changes.”
The Wolfpack rolled over the game’s final 10 minutes as its lead grew to double digits and Duke was helpless to stop it.
So the Blue Devils’ NCAA Tournament run, though better than a year ago, ended tantalizingly and frustratingly close to the Final Four.
They showed fight after losing to the Wolfpack in the ACC Tournament, ripping off three NCAA Tournament wins and eliminating top-seeded Houston on Friday night.
But it’s the Wolfpack who heads to the Final Four and that won’t be fun for Duke to watch.