Duke basketball needed a challenge. Blue Devils showed championship mettle to sweep UNC
Easy wins are fun, of course. It’s why they are often called laughers.
Duke, on the edge of the postseason and poised to be the nation’s No. 1 team, has had plenty of those to run up a sparkling record.
Saturday night, rival North Carolina presented the Blue Devils the gift they really needed.
When UNC trailed by 15 in the first half, it appeared Duke was on its way to another lopsided win. But Cooper Flagg picked up 13 first-half fouls, RJ Davis shot like he did when he was last season’s ACC player of the year and the Tar Heels built a seven-point lead early in the second half.
The Smith Center rocked, the Tar Heel fans salivating at the chance to see Duke melt under pressure and trip up before they can be slotted at No. 1 in Monday’s Associated Press Top 25 poll.
Instead, Duke turned it around to not only erase UNC’s lead but to push its own lead back to double digits and win, 82-69.
With that, the Blue Devils (28-3, 19-1 ACC) finished off the ACC regular-season championship, captured the No. 1 seed for the ACC Tournament and will almost certainly be voted No. 1 in the nation Monday.
All that’s nice, but the real accomplishment was Duke showing it could handle a hostile opponent and still pull away for a double-digit win.
“We grew up a lot today,” Duke graduate student forward Sion James said. “We learned a lot. We’ve been winning a lot of games big, which is great. I hope we keep doing that. But history says it’s not going to be like that every game. So we learned how to weather a storm, play through some physicality and find a way.”
Duke entered the Smith Center having won its past four games by 30 points or more.
In only three of the Blue Devils’ first 19 ACC games had the final margin been fewer than 10 points — an 86-78 win over Notre Dame, a 62-56 win at Wake Forest and a 77-71 loss at Clemson.
There’s a line of thinking, popular this time of year, that a top team like this needs a loss to reset itself and keep its edge entering the postseason.
Duke got a wake-up call and still won.
“I thought it was incredible to go through,” Scheyer said.
He relayed a story about the halftime locker room, after Duke had seen its 15-point first-half lead dwindle to a 43-42 advantage. That normally angers a coach. Scheyer had the opposite feeling this time.
“The first thing I said was, this is great,” Scheyer said, later adding, “I knew we needed it. It was the best thing for us. Even at the start of the second half, we went down seven. You had to go down seven and claw your way back. It was real. You test your trust in those moments with each other and we showed we had great trust in that situation.”
UNC hit 6 of its first 7 shots after halftime to bolt in front 56-49 after never leading in the first half. The last time Duke trailed by that many points was Feb. 8 during that loss at Clemson.
This time, Duke unleashed a 16-3 run — that included 12 consecutive Blue Devils points — over the next five or so minutes. The Blue Devils had the lead back and never relinquished it.
“I think it’s best not to freak out over down seven,” Duke freshman Kon Knueppel said. “It’s best to just play a possession at a time and try to win each possession. We call it hitting singles, and that’s what we did.”
The five baskets during the 12-0 run were scored by five different players. Only Cooper Flagg scored more than once, as he slammed home a rebound dunk of a James miss before adding two free throws on Duke’s next possession. But James, Knueppel, Caleb Foster and Maliq Brown had the other field goals.
Stopping Duke for 40 minutes, enough to beat the Blue Devils, takes more than UNC has been able to muster during the rivals’ two regular-season games.
Even with Duke facing a rare second-half deficit Saturday, in a hostile environment with a championship on the line, wasn’t enough to cause the Blue Devils to splinter.
Duke had already sent plenty of strong messages to the rest of college basketball about its prowess this season.
The one sent Saturday night may have been stronger than them all and it came at the best time. The season’s most important games will be played from here on out.
Duke is ready.