WRAL Sports Fan

Duke

Duke hangs on to beat Boston College, 66-65

By Jake Lloyd

Mar 14, 2009

A nickname might be needed. Maybe the “Big Three,” except that one’s taken. But that’s not important.

What matters is that Duke’s trio of Kyle Singler, Gerald Henderson and Jon Scheyer is getting it done for the ninth-ranked Blue Devils (26-6).

Friday’s 66-65 ACC Tournament victory over Boston College showed just how vital each is to Duke, which will face Maryland (20-12) in Saturday’s second semifinal. The trio made big shot after big shot — not to mention a couple key defensive plays — and scored 56 of Duke’s points.

“You got the results of that today,” said Boston College’s Tyrese Rice, who led a fighting Eagles effort with 17 points. “When they all come out and they play great, they’re very hard to beat.”

Rice pointed out that in Boston College’s 80-74 win over Duke about a month ago, Henderson and Singler played well but Scheyer struggled — scoring just eight points and not making a 3-pointer.

All four of Scheyer’s 3s were needed on Friday.

The thing about Duke’s three best players, however, is that they’re not at their best when one of them isn’t on the floor. That instantly became a problem against the Eagles when Henderson picked up two fouls in the game’s first 34 seconds and headed to the bench.

Duke’s leading scorer (16.6 ppg) played just 5 minutes in the first half and managed three points. Not coincidentally, the Blue Devils shot just 8-for-25 and trailed 29-22 at the half.

“I think Gerald was pretty mad, obviously he wanted to be in there,” Scheyer said. “But I think at halftime a bunch of guys just tapped him and said, ‘Hey, we need you, let’s go.’

“I knew Gerald was going to be ready when he came back in.”

Henderson confirmed Scheyer’s thoughts with a thunderous, one-handed reverse slam to begin the second half.

But his plays at the end of the game are what stand out. With Duke trailing 65-64 in the final minute, Henderson called for the ball in the post against 6-foot-5, 225-pound Rakim Sanders and proceeded to muscle his way to the basket for a finger-roll layup that proved to be the winning basket.

Surprisingly, Henderson was single-teamed on the play — at least initially. That might have been because Singler had already scored 26 points on 10-of-15 shooting and Scheyer was 4-of-9 from 3-point range.

Neither player could be left open. And both knew where to be on the floor along with Elliot Williams and Lance Thomas.

“I think especially with the new lineup we’ve been going with, I think we know … our areas of when to score, when to look to score and our different shots that are good for each other,” Scheyer said.

But when it came down to the final seconds, Duke’s best players had to make a defensive stand. Otherwise the 44-point second half and the 9-of-20 shooting from 3-point range would have been moot.

Henderson was up to the challenge, first forcing Sanders to take more than 5 seconds to dribble the ball from under Duke’s basket to the midcourt line before calling timeout.

That ran the game clock down to 5.5 seconds. And, after the timeout, when Sanders received the inbounds pass not far from the midcourt line, after a few dribbles he was forced to take a long, contested 3-pointer over Henderson’s outstretched arms just before the final horn.

Given more time, the Eagles might have been able to rescue a poorly executed final play that wasn’t designed to go to Sanders.

“With Rakim’s shot, I just wanted to push as far away from the basket as I could and then make him shoot the longer shot and just not foul,” Henderson said.

Scheyer was more impressed by Henderson’s ball pressure on the play before the timeout.

“I think that was big, where all of a sudden as opposed to them having 7 or 8 seconds on the sideline, they had 5,” Scheyer said. “I think that’s a huge difference, and Gerald played great ‘D’ on both plays.”

It was Singler who kept the Blue Devils in the game in the first half with 11 points. It was Scheyer, whose trio of 3s helped them gain the lead and slightly build it midway through the second half. And it was Henderson who made the trio of big plays at the end that secured a hard-fought victory over a sure-to-be NCAA Tournament team.

All three members of Duke’s dynamic triangle made coach Mike Krzyzewski happy at the buzzer, although he did plenty of sweating in the moments leading up to it.

“In the second half we flowed so much better offensively with Gerald, Jon and Kyle playing so well,” Krzyzewski said.