If there was a place in the standings for half-wins, the No. 18 men's basketball team's 84-64 victory over South Carolina State Monday night would go there.
Duke, now 5-1 overall, started the game strongly, jumping out to a 23-10 lead in the game's first six and a half minutes. The team looked as if it had put Saturday's heartbreaking loss to Illinois behind it and was motivated to blow out the Bulldogs.
But that's when Duke stopped playing defense. The Blue Devils allowed the Bulldogs to take advantage of them on the inside, even though no Bulldog stood above 6-foot-8. S.C. State matched Duke basket for basket the rest of the half, never letting the Blue Devils put the game away.
"I don't have an explanation for it," junior Greg Newton said. "We just lost concentration. I think we were satisfied with what we had accomplished to that point. We said, `That's enough for now, we can come back a little later and do more.'"
S.C. State was trying to make sure `a little later' never came. The Bulldogs applied a tough three-quarter press to stymie the Duke offense and cut the lead to five with just 43 seconds to go in the half. A Newton put-in gave the Blue Devils a 39-32 lead, but the Bulldogs had one possession left. They turned the ball over, and Carmen Wallace's driving layup and foul shot with three seconds left in the half allowed the Blue Devils to take a double-digit lead into the locker room.
"We stunk in the first half," head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "The first half gave you a plethora of things to talk about. It was a halftime where there weren't really enough minutes to accentuate all things that were needed. They made us stink."
Krzyzewski credited the play of S.C. State's guards in causing the Blue Devils problems, saying he didn't want to take any credit away from the Bulldogs game. He also noted Duke has had a tough stretch of games early on in the season, with two tough wins against top-25 teams in Alaska, combined with the loss Saturday night against Illinois. To compensate, the Duke team will receive today off.
But before getting Tuesday off, the Blue Devils had to survive the second half. And they had to watch what was probably the best show of the night and the one the fans didn't get to see--Krzyzewski's halftime talk. Sophomore Ricky Price called it Krzyzewski's third-most animated performance he had ever seen. In order to instill toughness in his big men, Krzyzewski ran an impromptu drill in the locker room with Newton and Tony Moore. Guard Steve Wojciechowski passed the ball to the head coach, who then wanted both Newton and Moore to catch the ball before Krzyzewski got it. If they didn't, they then had to wrestle Krzyzewski for the ball.
"To put it nicely, he was very, very, very, very upset with us," Newton said. "We weren't being physical. We weren't grabbing the ball. And that's all he wanted us to do is be aggressive and have a passion for the game."
At the outset of the second half, Duke showed the passion Krzyzew-ski was looking for. The Blue Devils went on a 15-4 tear in the game's first four and a half minutes to take a 57-36 lead. S.C. State head coach Cy Alexander had warned his team at halftime about not letting the Blue Devils go on a run early in the half. It obviously wasn't enough.
"Duke gained momentum going into the locker room and continued it in the second half," Alexander said. "I wanted our team to guard against Duke scoring right off the bat in the second half... We didn't do a good job because the lead of 10 quickly went to 16."
The Blue Devils must have found their lost defense in their lockers, as four of Duke's first eight points of the second half were started from two Jeff Capel steals. Krzyzewski praised the play of his co-captain, who finished with 19 points, four steals and four assists.
"Jeff Capel did a nice job," he said. "He anticipated things. I thought he was really working hard on the defensive end and also put together another good offensive night."
Alexander said once the Blue Devil scoring barrage opened the second half, he was tempted to call a time out. But he hesitated, and only after the Bulldogs committed another turnover did he bite the bullet and call his team to the bench.
"I saw our kids start running back with their heads down, saying `Oh God, here we go again,'" Alexander said. "The run did have a demoralizing effect."
The second half also provided the sparse crowd with a few aerial highlights. Capel opened the half with a steal and a one-handed dunk, and then later in the half, slashed through the paint and flew through the air for another jam.
Only late in the second half did Duke's lead dip below 20, but by then the game was essentially over. The Blue Devils managed to overcome their pesky opponent and seal another win.
"We didn't play anywhere we needed to play in order to be successful throughout the whole year," Capel said. "And that's something we are going to need to work on."
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