Somewhere in Winston Salem, Duke lost it's Mojo.. Tonight in Miami, they found it, after waking up and finding themselves at center court with 13 minutes to go and down by 20, they rallied back to within one. Maybe now the Duke squad finally has its shit together.. and can hold it together for the rest of the season and make a great tourney run..
Duke outscored Miami 56-37 over the last 12:47 of the game but it wasn't enough to pull off the comeback as the #4 Blue Devils fell to the Hurricanes, 96-95. Duke loses its second straight game and falls to 22-3 overall and 10-2 in the ACC while the 'Canes improve to 18-7 and 5-6.
Duke struggled on defense and turnovers. The Blue Devils gave up a season high 22 turnovers Sunday at Wake Forest and surpassed that with 23 tonight while the Demon Deacons scored a Duke opponent high 86 points Sunday only to be bested by 10 points by the Hurricanes.
Down 59-39 with 12:47 left, Duke put on a furious rally, scoring 56 points while shooting 17-of-28 from the field, 9-of-16 from three and 13-of-18 from the line over that time frame, but also gave up 37 points to fall a point short. Jon Scheyer scored 22 of his career high 27 points in the last 12:47 and DeMarcus Nelson scored 14 of his 19 in that time frame, as well, including seven in the last 35 seconds.
The beginning of the second half was all Miami and after Kyle Singler hit a three-pointer 45 seconds into the half, Miami would outscore Duke 15-0 over the next six and a half minutes and build the lead to 59-39.
Duke's comeback started with five quick points from Scheyer seven seconds apart to cut the lead to 59-44. A Nelson three cut the lead to 14 at 63-49 before Miami built the lead back to 16 at 67-51 with 9:45 left. Duke kept scoring but couldn't stop Miami, either, and finally cut the lead to 10 at 82-72 with a three from Gerald Henderson at the 3:45 mark.
Scheyer hit a three to cut the lead to 7 at 82-75 before McClinton hit two frees to make it 9-up. Greg Paulus hit a three and Nelson connected on a layup in between a McClinton jumper to cut the lead to six at 86-80 with 2:26 remaining. Miami pushed the lead back to 8 twice and yada, yada, Nelson hit a three at the buzzer for the final score of 96-95.
"We're going to turn this thing back around," Nelson said. "We've been too good all year to have whatever it is holding us back as a team. We're definitely going to find out what it is and address it.
Our season is not going on a downward spiral."
No comments:
Post a Comment