GREENSBORO - As Dick Vitale would say, Greensboro was brick city for the men's basketball team.
No. 1 Duke managed to play its way into the finals of this weekend's Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament, but it certainly wasn't because it put on a shooting clinic. In three games, the Blue Devils never shot over 39 percent from the floor.
Thirty-nine percent, how did they win at all? Great defense was more than enough to trounce Virginia Thursday night, and Saturday that same defense was good enough to play Clemson dead even. Will Avery was good enough to win the game, as he raced the length of the floor, put up an off balance jumper, darted in for the rebound and tipped home the win, 66-64, with 0.3 seconds remaining.
Sunday, it wasn't enough.
It seems simple to say, but it's true: if Duke could have knocked down its shots, UNC would have been dead in the water.
"We just didn't shoot well," said Trajan Langdon, who hit just 3-of-14 shots. "We didn't shoot well the whole tournament but before our defense won games for us."
The Tar Heels were left in a precarious situation after last Saturday's 77-75 loss at Duke. During that game, the Blue Devils found a weakness in the UNC armor and exploited it repeatedly-weak interior defense. Elton Brand ate the Tar Heels alive inside last weekend, and UNC knew that's where Duke would want go again this time around.
North Carolina decided it wouldn't lose the game that way and chose to clog up the blocks, putting a smaller defender in front of Brand and a big guy behind him. When Brand did catch the ball in the paint, he was double-teamed
"I wanted them to double-team me so I could relocate the ball," Brand said. "We just couldn't knock 'em down."
Only Roshown McLeod, who hit 5-of-10 threes, had any stroke from the outside. Langdon was woeful, and Duke's point-guard tandem of Steve Wojciechowski and Avery shot a combined 1-of-13, the lone make coming on a 22-foot three by Wojciechowski late in the game.
Wojo's poor shooting day (1-of-6) can be easily explained-he played the whole tournament sick. After Sunday's loss, he was so dehydrated he almost collapsed in the locker room and had to be rehydrated intravenously.
Avery, after playing brilliantly the first two games, couldn't buy a basket Sunday. Still, most of the shots weren't forced, but were wide-open looks at the basket.
With all this misery from the outside, what were the mighty Blue Devils to do?
Chris Carrawell had the answer.
"Coach said that they'd give us lots of open looks, and we'd have to go out there and knock 'em down," he said. "If not, then take 'em inside. We didn't do that. We never went to our guys down low. You can't do that and beat Carolina."
The Blue Devils, shooting ice cold from the outside, continued to take what UNC gave them, refusing to turn the tide and dictate the game to North Carolina instead.
"It was all us," Avery said. "We got great looks, but we just couldn't knock them down. The thing was, we kept settling for them. The worst part was we didn't get to the free-throw line."
And that's where the Blue Devils could have made a killing, in two senses of the word. One, they would have racked up the points that the outside game failed to provide. Two, they would have unclogged the middle by getting UNC's big men out of the game. Makhtar Ndiaye played the entire second half with three fouls. Brendan Haywood had two in the first half. Antawn Jamison finished with four.
"We should have gone at them once our jumpers stopped falling," Carrawell said. "Ndiaye should have fouled out; Jamison should have been in trouble the whole game. We just didn't get it done."
Duke attempted just 16 free throws and forced UNC into a mere 13 fouls.
But that's the beauty of it all, the silver lining in this cloud; none of this bad shooting has to carry over into next week's NCAA Tournament. The lesson can be learned without being stuck with any of the baggage.
"This is no sendoff to next week," coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "It's an ending. Next week is a new beginning. The regular season was an ending, and we won that. Now this is another ending. Now, you've just got to begin again."
And in a last bit of irony, the Blue Devils may have actually done themselves a favor by losing Sunday. They were playing for the coveted top seed in the East Region, the right to play the third and fourth rounds of the NCAA Tournament in Greensboro. But who wants to play in a building that has been so unkind anyway. Instead, Duke will play its regional finals, should it get there, in St. Petersburg, Fla., where maybe the rims will be a little more forgiving.
And if they're not, the Blue Devils should have learned what to do.
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