NEW YORK — Kyle Singler did not perform up to his lofty standards on the offensive end Friday night against No. 13 Connecticut, but in the end, it didn’t matter.
Despite getting only six points from their best player and shooting below 30 percent from the field, the No. 7 Blue Devils (6-0) built a nine-point halftime lead and maintained it for a confidence-boosting 68-59 win over the Huskies (4-1) in the NIT Season Tip-Off finals at Madison Square Garden Friday.
Singler finished 2-for-12 and picked up his third foul late in the first half, limiting his aggressiveness for most of the evening. With Duke’s star not as involved in the offense as he usually is, senior Jon Scheyer picked up the slack, finishing with 19 points, four rebounds and five assists. Scheyer earned tournament MVP honors for his performance, yet neither he nor fellow guard Nolan Smith shot well either, going a combined 11 of 40 from the field.
Smith scored 17 points but missed 17 shots, and many of those misses came from the elbow and the lane, a space clogged by big men on both ends.
“The lane today was not a good place to shoot the ball,” head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “There were a lot of distractions defensively being made by both teams for those shooters.”
With all three of the Blue Devils’ leading scorers off target for most of the night, Duke relied even more heavily than usual on its frontcourt to provide it with extra opportunities, and Brian Zoubek, Lance Thomas and the rest of the Blue Devils’ big men were able to control the offensive glass.
Thomas recorded his first career double-double, and Zoubek added 11 boards as Duke picked up 21 total offensive rebounds. Scheyer praised Zoubek in particular for keeping possessions alive and finding perimeter shooters open for 3-pointers that helped the Blue Devils keep UConn from cutting into their lead.
“The big guys came through real big today,” said freshman Andre Dawkins, who contributed 11 points against the Huskies. “They were taking charges, blocking shots, getting rebounds…. They played great.”
Early in the game, though, the story wasn’t rebounding, but the incredibly fast pace set by UConn’s Jerome Dyson and Kemba Walker, whom Krzyzewski called “a jet”. Both teams played at breakneck speed in the first several minutes and found easy layup after easy layup. The Huskies’ mistakes, though, soon caught up with them—what had been a three- or four-point Duke lead stretched to nine at the intermission thanks to a technical foul on UConn head coach Jim Calhoun and sloppy passing from his team. Duke turned the ball over just four times in the first period while forcing 12 UConn turnovers.
After halftime, the Blue Devils were able to dictate the pace, even without Singler driving the offense. Over six minutes, Duke pushed its lead from nine to 16, and a late run from the Big East squad trimmed that lead to seven before solid foul shooting ensured the victory for Duke.
“Knowing Kyle was out [with foul trouble and not shooting well] made us play that much harder and that much more intense, because we knew the other team probably would feel it was their time,” Scheyer said. “We just gathered up real quick when Kyle went out and said, ‘Look, we’ve got to keep this lead. We can’t let it slip.’ And fortunately, we didn’t keep it—we built it.”
Dyson, who scored 15 points, led the Huskies in scoring. But Stanley Robinson, UConn’s second-leading scorer, was held to 10 while being matched up with Singler on both ends. In effect, Krzyzewski said the two cancelled each other out.
Robinson threw down one highlight-reel dunk on the break in the first half, but the many UConn fans in Madison Square Garden didn’t have much else to cheer about Friday. The Huskies missed 13 free throws and did not sink even one 3-pointer, and that inability to hit open looks allowed Duke to survive an atrocious, 29.2 percent shooting night of its own.
The win gives Duke its second straight tournament title in New York, as well as a quality win against perhaps the best team it will face before ACC play begins in January. This is Duke’s fourth Preseason NIT championship in six appearances in the event.
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