When the UVa and Duke men's basketball teams met on Jan. 13 in Charlottesville, Va., both teams were near the bottom of the Atlantic Coast Conference, desperately looking for a win to turn their seasons around.
The Cavaliers got the 77-66 win thanks to 20 points from Harold Deane and 19 from Courtney Alexander. Duke had a six-point lead in the first half and led for a large portion of the second half until it fell apart in the last five minutes of the game.
"They picked up their defense at the end of the game, but I think a lot of that was predicated on our offense," sophomore guard Steve Wojciechowski said. "We really didn't move well without the ball and we didn't get good looks."
But even after that game, little has changed in the overall picture as Duke is currently sitting at 4-7 in the ACC, 13-10 overall, while UVa is a game ahead in the ACC at 5-6 (11-10 overall). Once again, both teams need a win to move them up in the ACC and possibly even to secure a bid to the NCAA Tournament.
The paths of the two teams to this point, however, have been dramatically different. UVa did not use the momentum from the Duke win to move on, but instead lost its next five games-four against ACC opponents-to fall to 2-6 and last place in the ACC. Something finally snapped, though, and the Cavaliers have become the hottest team in the league with four straight wins.
"I think our team is certainly feeling better about itself and playing with more confidence now than we were a couple of weeks ago," Virginia head coach Jeff Jones said. "We know that we have a very, very big game against Duke. We're going to have to play extremely well. Duke lost a tough game to Wake Forest, but in their last three home contests, I believe they've done extremely well."
Duke on the other hand, responded from the Virginia loss by winning its next three conference games. That luck would not hold, however, as the Blue Devils have lost three of their last four, including a 79-65 setback to Wake Forest, Duke's biggest loss of the season.
"We're excited to be back at home," associate head coach Tommy Amaker said. "It's going to be a tough game against a Virginia team that is playing very well right now.
One of the keys of the game for Duke will be reversing the shooting trend from the school's last meeting. So far this year the Cavaliers are ranked last in the ACC with a paltry 40.6 percent shooting average in its games this year, but led by a 9-of-12 performance from the Alexander, UVa hit 51 percent of its shots from the field against Duke. The Blue Devils responded with one of their worst shooting performances, hitting only 34.8 percent of their shots from the floor.
Duke's attempt to change this will not be helped by the loss of junior forward Carmen Wallace to injury. After a review of the MRI on the knee that Wallace injured Friday in practice, the most recent word is that Wallace has torn ligaments and a possible problem with his meniscus. He will be going through rehabilitation in the next few days and then a decision will be made on whether or not he will need surgery or if he'll be able to return at all this year. Without Wallace, Duke will have to depend solely on Greg Newton and Taymon Domzalski with continuous spells from Stan Brunson to stop UVa inside.
Duke's defense will not only to have to worry about a lack of bodies in the paint, but also should be concerned about speedy point guard Harold Deane. Deane is one the ACC's leading scorers, averaging 16.9 points per game, but he has taken his game to a new level, recently averaging 20.2 points per game against ACC opponents. The Blue Devils will also have to keep their eyes on shooting guard Curtis Staples. Staples has suffered a loss of production from his stellar rookie season last year, but as Duke found out in the first meeting, he can still be dangerous. Staples hit three three-pointers on his way to 15 points for the Cavaliers against the Blue Devils in January. Not only will Duke have to worry about hitting its own outside shots, but it will have to stop Staples and Deane from finding a rhythm.
"They've got a great backcourt," Wojciechowski said. "It's really hard to shut [Deane and Staples] down, but if we can force them into doing some things they don't normally do, we've got a good chance of winning."
Duke has had a chance to win every game its played this season, but by losing many of them, it has put itself closer and closer to a must-win situation. One more loss would probably not knock them out of NCAA contention, but a win against Virginia would be a great help when it comes time for the seeding of the ACCs-a tournament that this year, more than in years past, will have a great effect on how many conference teams go to the NCAA Tournament.
"We really haven't talked about [the postseason] extensively," Wojciechowski said. "Our main focus all year was take it game-by-game and practice-by-practice, and get better with each day...
"We need to win these games-they're home games and they're games we're capable of winning if we play up to our potential... We've got to go full steam ahead and we can't look back."
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