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Men's basketball States its case against Wolfpack**
It took a whole half of basketball before N.C. State showed up to play Sunday at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
But maybe the Wolfpack should have just stayed home.
State went 4-of-30 from the floor in the first half (that's right, math majors -- 13.3 percent) and found itself trailing 36-15 at the break. The Pack came back after halftime but the Blue Devils showed very little mercy, rolling to an 85-58 Atlantic Coast Conference win before 9,314 on the student body's senior day.
Duke, which improved to 18-3, 10-3 in the ACC, regained its one-game lead over second-place North Carolina in the league standings. N.C. State fell to 9-15 and is now stuck in dead-last place at 3-9 in the conference.
Cherokee Parks stole the ball on State's openning possession, got it back in transition and dunked to give Duke a 2-0 lead. The rout was on.
"When we play defense like that, we're a very good basketball team," head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "The last two ballgames, we played excellent defense and it translates into good offense."
Duke's starting backcourt of Chris Collins and Jeff Capel combined for 33 points and seven assists, outscoring the Blue Devil frontcourt starters by a point. But comparisons aside, Duke's balanced-scoring effort led to its second-consecutive blowout win (it beat Virginia 84-54 Wednesday) and the team's sixth 20-point-plus victory of the season.
"I'd rather have 'em like this," Krzyzewski said. "In the conference, you don't expect games where you win by 20 or 25 -- I never expect that. During my first two years, I was usually the other guy, looking up at 25, 30 . . .
"I liked the way our guys handled the last two games -- I didn't think we ever got sloppy. We kept our intensity and we didn't get selfish."
Senior co-captain Grant Hill was particularly generous, limiting himself to 10 points while dishing out seven assists. Krzyzewski was particularly fond of a feed his All-American made to Carmen Wallace, whose layup ended the first half.
"If there's a play that epitomizes who Grant Hill is, it's the last play of the half," Krzyzewski said. "We set it up for him to take the last shot. Being who he is, he finds a freshman and Carmen makes a great play to end the half on a high note. I'm not sure how many guys would pass the ball there.
"He's just a terrific player -- they've never made one like him."
The Blue Devils pummeled the Pack in just about every statistic, holding a 23-9 advantage in second-chance points, leading 48-30 in the paint, converting 24 points off turnovers (State had six) and scoring 19 fast-break points to NCSU's six. Most of that damage came before the half ended.
"I've never been on a team that's held an opponent to 15 points in the first half," senior Antonio Lang said. "It was amazing. Hopefully, at clinics, they'll look at the first half of this game and say, `Hey, if you want to play defense, this is the way you do it."'
NOTES: Senior co-captain Marty Clark returned to uniform and played 17 minutes Sunday after a week-long bout with tendinitis. Clark had missed last Wednesday's Virginia game.
"It was nice to see Marty back," Krzyzewski said. "He had not practiced, and just to see him out on the court -- those minutes that he had today were really good and he felt pretty good after. Hopefully, tomorrow morning he'll feel good"...Hill suffered a slight sprain of his left ankle and left the game at the 17:17 mark of the first half. He returned three minutes later, and a re-taping job at halftime appeared to ease Hill's pain.
"I don't think it's anything major," Krzyzewski said. "We don't anticipate anything serious about that"...With Duke's two wins this week and three of the four teams ahead of the Blue Devils in the USA Today/CNN poll losing a game, Duke vaulted to No. 2 in that poll. The new Associated Press poll comes out later today. Duke is currently ranked sixth in the AP poll, but four of the five teams ahead of it lost during the previous week's games.
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