Duke wins shootout at Coach K corral
Feb 23, 2009
There were no action films or Westerns among the nominees for best picture at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday night. But even as the motion picture industry was handing out Oscars, Duke and Wake Forest engaged in the kind of riveting basketball firefight that, were it made into a movie, might be called “Shootout at the Coach K Corral.”
Thanks largely to 35 points from Gerald Henderson and 30 from Jon Scheyer, the Blue Devils emerged with a 101-91 victory in a hard-fought battle Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski called “as big a game as we’ve had here in three years.” Each junior notched a career high, and each surpassed the top scoring performances by any Duke player this season.
Not since Gene Banks and Mike Gminski in January 1978 have a pair of Dukies scored at least 30 points in the same game. Henderson and Scheyer combined for more points than any two players in Cameron Indoor Stadium’s nearly 60-year history.
“That’s as good a game as there’s been in the ACC, offensively at least,” said Krzyzewski, perhaps forgetting his team lost to North Carolina by a nearly identical 101-87 score 11 days earlier. “Wake Forest is a very, very talented basketball team. We couldn’t stop them, but they couldn’t stop us, either. It was one of those old-fashioned ACC games.”
The Devils needed every point they could get, because Wake shot 61 percent from the floor, won the rebounding battle by 11, and got 28 points from guard Jeff Teague and 26 from forward James Johnson. “I will say this – if somebody would have said we were going to score 91 points, and we’d lose, I think I would have called them a liar,” admitted Wake coach Dino Gaudio.
Duke has failed recently to apply solid pressure on the ball -- the point of origin for its defense -- and its fortunes have suffered accordingly. Forsaking the former starters at point guard, Nolan Smith and Greg Paulus, for the past two games the Blue Devils went with Elliot Williams, a gifted athlete and enthusiastic player whose “verve” has energized the defense, according to Krzyzewski. Scheyer handles the playmaking at the offensive end, leaving the ball pressure to the freshman, who stole three Wake inbounds passes in barely two minutes at the game’s outset.
Yet the new arrangement, which left Smith and Paulus on the bench for all but nine minutes each, failed miserably at the defensive end for much of the second half as the Devils were entirely unable to prevent the Demon Deacons from driving the lane for layups and short jumpers. “Sometimes great offense just beats defense,” Krzyzewski said. “They kept coming down on us, we were always like retreating. You’re playing off your heels.”
During one stretch, the Deacs scored on 12 of 13 possessions. Even so, they managed to shave only four points off Duke’s lead as the home team fought desperately, and successfully, to maintain the advantage it seized early in the first half. “You lose the lead in a game like this, you might lose the game,” Krzyzewski said.
This was not just any game for Duke. Forward Lance Thomas recalled the “hurt” of losing at Wake Forest on Jan. 28, when the Blue Devils were ranked No. 1. Krzyzewski spoke of the contest’s strategic importance, coming after three losses in four ACC games and preceding three ACC road games in four outings to end the regular season.
“You have to win this game,” Krzyzewski said. “You just have to win this game. I know that. I know that. And so whatever you can do ethically, legally, and physically, you’ve got to try to do.” To achieve that goal, the coach exhorted Duke students in the less-than-full bleachers to cheer their loudest prior to the game, and removed his jacket and pleaded for heightened support after a particularly fierce scrum under the basket early in the second half.
That desperation also meant striking a subtle motivational note with his team, steering his players toward a positive, affirmative frame of mind. “I told them, ‘I’m not going to tell you we have to win, I’m going to tell you we’re going to win,’” Krzyzewski said. “The anticipation of doing something should help us better than the expectation of having to do it. And it’s a little bit what we did with our Olympic team. We’re going to win, not that we have to win.”
Certainly the Blue Devils, now 22-5 and 8-4 in the ACC, felt good about their chances after forcing Wake into 16 turnovers compared to 15 baskets in the first half. The lost opportunities, coupled with a fast pace, seemed to leave the Deacs slightly dazed defensively as the Devils built a 43-21 lead on Scheyer’s layup with 5:28 left in the period.
More than once, Duke players simply dribbled past defenders in halfcourt situations, with no one rotating to help. Forward Johnson was victimized by Henderson several times. “I’m a little disappointed, obviously, in our defense,” said Gaudio, rattling off his team’s standing prior to the game as the ACC leader in field goal percentage defense, 3-point field goal defense, and blocked shots. “It was lacking tonight and that usually has been our stronghold.”
But just when it appeared those defensive shortcomings would prove fatal, Teague shot his team back into the game, scoring 12 of his points in under four minutes to pull Wake within 51-40 at halftime.
Teague had been struggling lately, losing ground in discussions regarding the All-ACC squad and league player of the year honors. Quiet at the outset against Duke, he hit a pair of long 3-pointers to jumpstart Wake’s offense. Overall he hit 10 of 16 shots in 38 minutes and converted all six of his free throw attempts. “I’ll take 28 out of him any time,” Gaudio said.
Since beating Duke, Wake has now lost four of seven games. The Deacs dropped to 20-5 overall, 7-5 in the ACC, and are likely to fall from the top 10 in the national polls. But they too have four games remaining, plenty of time for a few uplifting plot twists in what remains their best season since 2005.
