WRAL Sports Fan

Duke

Duke's season ends with 77-54 loss to Villanova

By Jake Lloyd

Mar 27, 2009

Boston — Jon Scheyer had a hard time describing what had just transpired on the floor of the TD Bankworth Garden.

The Duke junior sat in a sullen locker room after third-seeded Villanova’s 77-54 pasting of the second-seeded Blue Devils in Thursday night’s East Region semifinal and shook his head.

It wasn’t the fact that Duke (30-7) had lost to a very good Big East team. It was the fact that in the Devils’ most important game of the season, they simply couldn’t get untracked – from start to finish.

“I really don’t know,” Scheyer said. “We had some really good looks, I mean really good looks. And we just didn’t hit.”

That was an understatement. The Devils had one of their two worst offensive games of the season.

It wasn’t their lowest scoring output – they had just 47 in a blowout loss at Clemson in early February. But their 26.7 percent shooting (16-of-60) was a season-worst, and their 5-of-27 performance from 3-point range was even worse.

“It’s frustrating just because we were getting the shots that we wanted, but we weren’t hitting and we let it affect our defense,” Scheyer said. “It was frustrating.”

Villanova (29-7) didn’t have a great offensive night, either, shooting 42.2 percent (27-of-64), but it did enough. Scottie Reynolds led the Wildcats’ attack with 16 points, and Dante Cunningham added 14 points and 11 rebounds.

It was an especially brutal night for Duke’s three top scorers — Gerald Henderson (16.8 ppg), Kyle Singler (16.5 ppg) and Scheyer (14.9 ppg).

Henderson didn’t score until 1 minute, 10 seconds remained in the first half and shot just 1-for-14 to finish with seven points. He hadn’t played so poorly since a two-point outing at Purdue on Dec. 2.

“They did it the best and it was every time,” Henderson said of Villanova’s ability to take away his driving lanes to the basket. “It was tough for me to get my own shot.”

Singler had Duke’s best offensive game, scoring a team-high 15 points, but he couldn’t find his touch from the perimeter. He was just 1-of-6 from 3-point range, missing several open looks.

And Scheyer couldn’t find the basket. He shot 3-for-18 from the floor, including 2-for-10 from behind the arc, and finished with an ugly 13 points.

Duke’s offensive struggles spanned the entire game, yet the Devils had plenty of reasons to feel confident at halftime. They trailed just 26-23 despite a 7-of-25 shooting performance.

It was a similar circumstance to two weeks earlier, when they trailed Boston College 29-22 at the break of their first-round game of the ACC Tournament. They got untracked in the second half and went on to win the title.

And that’s what the Devils set out to do at the beginning of Thursday’s second half. But when the Wildcats quickly gained control, pushing their advantage to double digits, 36-26, on a layup by Reynolds with 16:52 to play, Duke was thrown aback.

“You come into each second half whether you have a lead or whether you’re behind saying that the first four minutes are going to determine the half,” David McClure said. “And I mean it’s obviously not always the case, but it really does set the tempo.

“Your goal is always to get the other team to call a timeout in those first four minutes, and today we had to.”

Playing against Duke’s pressure defense, the Wildcats used a pair of backdoor cuts to grab the double-digit margin — and the Devils never cut the lead to less than 10.

“I think they definitely were taking advantage of the fact that we were being over-aggressive,” McClure said. “I think we got a little overanxious.”

That’s exactly what happened after Villanova established its double-digit lead. The Devils still had plenty of time to get back in the game, but they started forcing 3-pointers instead of taking their time on offense.

The shots continued to bang off the rim – some bricks, others in and out – and Duke’s deficit got larger even though Villanova wasn’t exactly shooting the lights out.

“I think it came primarily from our frustration on offense,” coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “There was nothing easy. Villanova didn’t give you anything.

“When you did have that open shot, I thought we put a lot of game pressure on ourselves when we shouldn’t have.”

Scheyer said the Devils played like there was much less time remaining than was really the case.

“When you’re down like that, whatever the lead was – 10, 12, 15 – there’s so much time left in the game,” Scheyer said. “We were playing like there were five minutes left when there were 15 minutes left.

“And that’s something,” Scheyer added before pausing. “It’s frustrating.”

It wasn’t as if the Devils weren’t trying. Krzyzewski made sure to point that out afterward. They were perhaps, however, trying too hard.

They could sense their season was on life support, and they wanted to get back in the game as quickly as possible – to their detriment.

“We didn’t panic,” Henderson said. “But at the same time, your season is on the line so you feel a personal need to score the basketball. It’s nothing that’s unnatural.

“But whether or not we made the right decisions, we did have chances to win, to get the thing closer on offense and defense.”

But the Devils didn’t convert many of their opportunities, and the Wildcats made sure to not give them any additional chances. Villanova outrebounded Duke 49-33 and allowed the Devils just eight offensive rebounds.

“That was a big emphasis for this game, offensive rebounding,” Scheyer said. “And I think when we lost that lead a little bit, we didn’t do the things that had got us to that point. That’s disappointing.”

As has been the case during their losses this season, the Devils let their shooting struggles affect them on the other end of the floor.

During Villanova’s 11-4 spurt that pushed its advantage to 49-33 with 12:24 remaining, the Wildcats scored on five of seven possessions – three layups, a runner and a pair of free throws.

“I thought our defense for the most part was good, except when we got down we kind of stopped playing defense and started gambling,” Scheyer said.

Foul trouble didn’t help the Devils. Henderson picked up his fourth foul with 13:53 remaining and Duke down 13, sending him to the bench when his team desperately needed him to try to stimulate the offense.

Even when he got back in, the high-flying forward wasn’t able to play his brand of basketball.

“It was tough,” Henderson said. “We were down, so you want to get out to them, after them on defense. But if you’ve got four fouls with 10 minutes to go, it’s hard to really attack your guy.

“But that’s just the way it went. It wasn’t a good day.”

Not a good day in the least for Duke, which still had a good season. The Devils won their conference tournament and advanced to the Sweet 16 – both for the first time since 2006. And in winning 10 of their last 12 games, they avoided repeating the late-season collapses of the past two seasons.

But when all was said and done, they were left to ponder a night when almost nothing went right – from the opening tip until after the clock had struck midnight.

“Obviously we had a great season, (but) it’s an extremely tough loss,” Scheyer said. “I don’t even know what really happened, to be honest with you.”