Kyle Singler stood on the end line trying to inbound the ball late in a tight game and suddenly found himself reaching back for his days as a high school quarterback.
Seeing Greg Paulus waving at him and wide open on the other end of the floor, Singler threw a long pass that Paulus took in for an easy layup on Saturday, one of several critical second-half plays for Singler that helped boost No. 7 Duke past Virginia Tech, 72-65.
"It was kind of a football-football thing," Singler said of the pass that sent Paulus, also a former quarterback, in for the basket that gave Duke a 68-63 lead with 33 seconds left.
"You get a layup at that point, God Bless America," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said.
Singler scored 19 of his 21 points in the second half after foul trouble forced him to watch much of the first half, and he made the Hokies pay for focusing too much on Gerald Henderson. He scored 17 of his 21 points before halftime, before Singler got rolling.
"I felt like I needed to give the team a boost because I hadn't done much in the first half," Singler, the Blue Devils' second-leading scorer with a 16-point average, said.
Doing it in a game that was tied with six minutes to play, and against a team that was fighting desperately for another victory to boost its NCAA tournament hopes, made it better.
"A team like that that's hungry for a win, fighting, those are the games that you're going to play towards the end of the season in March," Singler said. "Game pressure like that is definitely big and it shows that this team has a lot of confidence and character."
No comments:
Post a Comment