Henderson leads Duke over NCState by 17

It took a while, but Gerald Henderson and #2 Duke finally starting shooting well enough to impress even J.J. Redick.

Henderson scored 21 pts and the Blue Devils shot 77% from the floor in the second half for the 73-56 victory over NC State.

Nolan Smith hit consecutive 3's 30 seconds apart to start the decisive run for the Blue Devils (17-1, 4-0 ACC).

But it wasn’t until Henderson took the game over by hitting jumpers and driving the lane for authoritative dunks that his teammates started to find the rips in the Wolfpack’s defense. As a result, Duke’s athletic swingman finish with his fourth straight game with at least 19 points.


“G’s play gave the team a big lift—when, someone plays with that much assertiveness and confidence, it kinds of feeds down to the whole team,” forward Kyle Singler said. “Guys kind of get shots and feed from that.”

With Redick—the ACC’s career scoring leader— watching from behind the Duke bench, Singler scored 14 of his 17 pts in the second half and Smith finished with 13 to help the Blue Devils close the game on a 27-5 run. Their 20-for-26 shooting matched the best performance in a second half in nearly 30 years under Coach K.

“When we’re sharp and running our stuff and executing it … if we’re doing it sharp, we’re going to make shots,” Henderson said. “We’re going to get open shots and we have good enough players to knock them down.”

Brandon Costner and Ben McCauley both scored 15 points for the Wolfpack (10-6, 1-3), who led much of the game but hit just one field goal over the final 7:45.

“We were in it, and we couldn’t close it,” McCauley said. “We had them where we wanted them, and guys were playing tremendous ball. … Unfortunately, guys that were in the end couldn’t come through.”

The Wolfpack’s cold spell helped Duke claim its 12th straight victory at Cameron over NC State, which hasn’t won inside the Blue Devils’ famously hostile arena since 1995.

“You can see how it lifts their spirits up,” Costner said. “It’s up to us as a visiting team to pick up our level of intensity and match it, and we didn’t.”

For a while, they had the streak in serious jeopardy—until Henderson, Smith and the rest of the Blue Devils heated up.

“That game just turned during the last 8 minutes,” Coach K said.

The second of Smith’s two big 3s made it 52-49 with 9 1/2 minutes left, put Duke up to stay and started the game-ending burst in which the Blue Devils came away with points on eight straight possessions.