Game blog: Duke edges Georgia Tech 65-61, wins ACC Championship

By Tim Hall
Mar 14, 2010

comments

3:21 p.m., Game over: Tech missed its last shot. Duke wins 65-61, ACC Champions!!!!! See you in the NCAA Tournament, most likely a one seed now.

3:19 p.m., Singler on the line: Tech made a lay-up and fouled Singler. He shoots two with Duke up two. He makes em both.

3:18 p.m., Clutch Scheyer!: He shot the three, he made the three with 18 second left. Duke is up four. It's 63-59. Wow

3:16 p.m., Yikes: Favors dunk. One point game.

3:13 p.m., Interesting: GT is not going away. Moe Miller is shooting free throws to make it a three point game. He hits em both and it's 60-57 Duke. 1:48 to play.

3:04 p.m., Peacock down: I think Zoubek caught Zack Peacock with an elbow on the front end of a one-and-one free throw. Oliver made the free throw but Zack hit the deck. He left the game after he lay on the floor for a while. Zoubek did try to help Peacock up.

It's 60-53. GT has no timeouts with 3:08 to play. Whoops.

3:00 p.m., Mason good for a highlight: He caught a Smith air ball late in the shot clock and dunked it home with two hands. Then he gave up a Glen Rice Jr. three at the other end. Duke leads 56-48 with 4:00 to play.

2:55 p.m., Plays like that win games: Nolan got stuffed, or fouled, going in for a fast break dunk. It wasn't called. Duke rebounded it. Then they missed another shot and Mason Plumlee flew in for a big offensive rebound. He kicked it to Scheyer who nailed a three. That put Duke up 11 with six minutes to play. Coach K got down and starting slapping the floor for his team to D up. Crowd got pretty nuts right there.

Duke is up 54-43 with 5:20 to go.

2:44 p.m., Tech trying to comeback: They haven't led at all in this game. They haven't been tied. They have been within three at one point. Shumpert hit a three to cut it to four. But at the other end Brian Oliver fouls Scheyer shooting a three. Scheyer makes all three.

Georgia Tech is starting to wilt here in the last two minutes. Duke's defense is really aggravating them. Duke leads 47-38 with 7:57 left to play. I don't think Tech has any chance down the stretch.

2:34 p.m., Crazies are here: There is a small collection of Cameron Crazies here. It's funny because I recognize a few of them. They aren't sitting nearly as close, and no one else in the arena is joining with them in their normal student chants. They sound so loud in Cameron. They're pretty quiet here.

Georgia Tech by the way, would be the lowest seed ever to win the tournament. They're just the fourth team seeded lower than sixth to make the finals in 57 years of this tournament.

2:26 p.m., Feed it to Favors: Derrick Favors is starting to own the post. He's got 13 points in the game, six already this half. Nolan Smith just juked Glen Rice Jr. so bad he twisted his ankle. Rice is really limping bad. He's heading back to the locker room to get looked at.

Wow what a turn of events we just had. Favors just missed an alley-oop attempt. The ball slipped out of his hands. That would have cut the Duke lead to three, instead Singler makes a bucket and gets fouled at the other end. He made the free throw. It's a five point swing.

Duke leads 38-30 with 12:56 to play.

2:16 p.m., Smith picked up where he left off: Smith has been sitting for ages, but came right back in and nailed a three-pointer on his first shot attempt. Duke hasn't done much other than that. It's 33-26 Duke with 15:51 left in the game.

2:10 p.m., The stats: Nolan Smith leads Duke with 11 points, but he had all of them in the first eight minutes of the game. Then he got into foul trouble. Singler scored five points, Scheyer has just four points.

Andre Dawkins was the big surprise with seven off the bench, including a highlight reel dunk.

Favors leads Tech with seven points. Moe Miller has six.

Duke is shooting 41 percent form the field compared to Georgia Tech's 34 percent.

1:56 p.m., Fortunate end for Duke: Singler banged in a jumper with six seconds left, but GT ran the floor and passed it to Iman Shumpert who drained a three with a second to go. The problem was Moe Miller traveled before he passed it off.

Duke leads at the half 29-22.

1:52 p.m., ESPN gets knocked out: Kyle Singler just ran into the first row of the press table. He ran directly into Dan Shulman, the play-by-play man for ESPN. Dick Vitale stood up and started yelling and screaming after seeing that Dan was okay. The chair Shulman was sitting in was bent beyond recognition and he also was given a new headset. There was scene around the ESPN set for a few minutes to see if all was okay.

I can't wait to see that on sportscenter. If you were watching on TV tell me what Dickie V said.

Duke leads 26-20, Gani Lawal had a huge jam.

1:45 p.m., Tech answers: Gani Lawal scored on an And 1 play. He will have a free throw coming after the media timeout. It's 26-17 Duke with 3:35 on the clock.

1:42 p.m., Andre Dawkins!!!!: He just took his man off the dribble and flew into the lane for a one-handed stuff. I knew that this guy is an athlete but we haven't seen anything except threes all year from him. This was about as shocking as the one jam Stephen Curry had at Cameron Indoor when he went hard to the rack for a powerful dunk.

Duke leads 26-15 with 3:53 left in the half.

1:36 p.m., Tech hangs in: The Jackets could have been blown out of this game early. They were turning it over and Smith was on fire and hitting buckets in transition.

Smith also picked up his second foul with under eight minutes left in the half. He goes back to the bench. His back-up Andre Dawkins knocked down a three-ball.

Duke leads 22-15 with 5:56 left in the half. All of the sudden Duke has seven fouls in the game.

1:20 p.m., Nolan Smith!: It's a hot start for the member of Duke's Big 3. Smith hit a three-pointer to give him 11 points in the first eight minutes. Moe Miller has a couple of threes for Tech. He can drain it from a long way too.

We have only three fouls called in this game so far. That's the way I like it, I'm fine if the refs let it play. This game hasn't gotten too physical yet though.

It's 17-8 Duke with 11:33 left in the first.

1:15 p.m., Hot start for Duke: Blue Devils lead 10-2 with 14:21 left to play in the first half. Duke is outperforming Tech in every way so far. Intensity, rebounding, hustle and ball control all favor Duke right now.

The Jackets should feel fortunate they are only down eight right now with the way they started. It could be 15-0. Nolan Smith has eight of the 10 points.

1:09 p.m., Tech can't be this careless: I know they like to turn it over but come on! Tech has five possessions and five turnovers to start the game. I've never seen that in my life. That is just gross! They don't even have a shot attempt. Tech takes a 30 second timeout.

Duke leads it 6-0 with 17:34 left in the first half.

12:57 p.m., Storylines: First of all, thank you Duke for being here today. Could you imagine if Miami and Georgia Tech were playing today? There may have been 8,000 fans here today. Right now this place is full of Duke blue. There are maybe 17,000 fans in here. This place seats nearly 24,000. I was talking to Ryan Craig of WRAL who's sitting next to me. He said this is one of the only times Duke will ever have a home environment outside of Cameron. Most of the time Carolina is still in it and all the Heels fans stay to hate on the Blue Devils.

12:25 p.m., Championship Sunday: Duke and Georgia Tech meet here at the 57th ACC Tournament. Duke is looking to win its second straight ACC title and its ninth in 12 years. I just signed off the air. Adam Gold and I did a two and a half hour tournament special show leading up to Wolfpack Sports Network's call of the game.

It's the best day in sports. Tournament championships and then selections at 6 p.m., what could be better?

Mike Maniscalco and Mark Thomas will be on from 6-8 p.m. on 620 The Buzz and from 8-10 p.m. on The Fan. They'll be breaking it all down at Tobacco Road Sports Cafe. Check it out.

I think Duke has the edge here today. I think they've learned from two tough, gritty wins in the quarters and semis. They own the ACC Tournament. They're 30-3 since 1999, a staggering stat to me.

The last time Tech was in the final was 2005, and they lost to Duke 69-64. J.J. Redick had 26 on that day.

Most Recent Comments

View All Comments

RE: Game blog: Duke edges Georgia Tech 65-61, wins ACC Championship

Miami should have won yesterday, that's news to me. GT didn't outplay Duke or else they would've won the game. Kentucky ran UNC off the court for sure but that's not saying much. Like I said, every top team has struggled at times this year. Have fun in the NIT.
- Posted by tlg0022

oh ok, the only stat duke won besides the final score was 12 more FTs shot, but then again, thats dukes way of outplaying people.

but hey, this is your day, enjoy it with out bringing Carolina up !!

oh yeah, you all cant.

RE: Game blog: Duke edges Georgia Tech 65-61, wins ACC Championship

Great game by Tech. Awesome to win the ACC title and get the 1 seed. To the haters in Chapel Hill, say hi to Roy on the golf course.

RE: Game blog: Duke edges Georgia Tech 65-61, wins ACC Championship

Miami should have won yesterday, that's news to me. GT didn't outplay Duke or else they would've won the game. Kentucky ran UNC off the court for sure but that's not saying much. Like I said, every top team has struggled at times this year. Have fun in the NIT.

RE: Game blog: Duke edges Georgia Tech 65-61, wins ACC Championship

Duke, best team in the ACC... but not in the class of the top 3-4 in the big east, or Kansas, or Kentucky more maybe even Kansas st........sorry
- Posted by Rdi73162

HAHA yeah right..if we did end up getting a 2 seed I would love to be in Kentucky's bracket. All talent, no team, they needed OT just to beat a weak Miss St. team. Every team in the top 10 has struggled and looked average at some point in the year. Syracuse is the team that scares me the most but I think we could certainly hang with UK, KU, and def Kansas St.
- Posted by tlg0022

ok, but ummmm miami should have beat duke yeasterday, GT outplayed duke today
but yeah ok, Kentucky will run duke off the court.

RE: Game blog: Duke edges Georgia Tech 65-61, wins ACC Championship

Duke, best team in the ACC... but not in the class of the top 3-4 in the big east, or Kansas, or Kentucky more maybe even Kansas st........sorry
- Posted by Rdi73162

HAHA yeah right..if we did end up getting a 2 seed I would love to be in Kentucky's bracket. All talent, no team, they needed OT just to beat a weak Miss St. team. Every team in the top 10 has struggled and looked average at some point in the year. Syracuse is the team that scares me the most but I think we could certainly hang with UK, KU, and def Kansas St.

View All Comments

WRAL Sports Fan

ACC Live game blogs