Before last night, Maryland star Steve Francis supposedly had a picture of Chris Carrawell taped to the door of his locker to remind him of Duke's win in College Park last month.
Carrawell's mug probably won't be alone anymore. Shane Battier could be making an appearance on 12 or so more lockers in Maryland.
Battier scored a career-high 27 points, including a personal 11-5 run early in the second half, as No. 2 Duke (22-1, 10-0 in the ACC) blew open a 10-point game at the half and destroyed seventh-ranked Maryland (19-4, 7-3), 95-77, last night in Cameron.
"We were just hot," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "Battier was out of his mind. You just have to keep letting him shoot. For about five minutes, I don't think anyone can play better than that."
After a first half during which both teams made mini-runs and the Blue Devils maintained about an eight- to 10-point edge, Duke came out quickly in the second half to put the game away.
With the score 52-43 two minutes into the second half, Trajan Langdon, who hit just 3-of-11 shots for the game, nailed two consecutive three-pointers and the lead began to swell.
Battier began his run at the 14:27 mark, hitting a three-pointer from out top, a floater from 14 feet and then another pair of threes from the top of the key. The last one gave Duke a 78-53 lead with over 12 minutes left in the game.
"It felt like high school again," Battier said. "I was feeling it. I'm doing a much better job taking the ball to the basket, and I think that's really opened up everything else."
And while Battier was shining, his teammates weren't far behind. Five other Blue Devils scored in double figures, and Elton Brand added 12 rebounds for a double-double.
Despite all of the talk from Maryland over the past month that last night would be different than Duke's 18-point win in College Park back in January, the Terrapins were once again the defeated team as the last 10 minutes turned in to garbage time.
"It did feel like they gave up a little bit," said Brand of Maryland's play after Duke put the game away. "We just wanted to send a message out today. Everyone talked about them being hungry, but we were hungry too."
An early 8-0 run after Maryland scored the first three points of the game gave Duke a lead that it never relinquished. Several times the Blue Devils looked like they would pull away early. Battier punctuated a 10-2 spurt with a tomahawk jam over Terrence Morris and subsequent free throw that gave Duke a 27-16 lead.
But Maryland answered that charge and was within three, at 38-35, when the Blue Devils began to overcome their early cold shooting from the outside and build a lead.
Despite shooting 43 and 42 percent in both halves, respectively, Duke held Maryland to 36 percent in the second half and the Terrapins hit just 4-of-17 from three-point range for the game.
"The first half I thought we kept it interesting," Maryland coach Gary Williams said. "We tried to do some different things. I question how ready we were starting the second half. [Duke] caught us there and that was it."
Francis was never able to dominate. The junior hit just 6-of-15 from the field, and though he scored 18 points, less than half of them came against Carrawell, who once again helped contain Francis and Maryland's high-octane offense.
"[Francis] didn't come out like I thought he would," Carrawell said. "I thought he was going to come right at me."
None of Francis' teammates ever came at Duke either. Now with a three-game bulge on the rest of the conference, the Blue Devils avoided the distraction of Maryland's previous loss Sunday and Connecticut's setback Monday to close these past two difficult weeks without a blemish.
"I don't know if we shut the door, but we came a lot closer to closing it," Battier said. "We were focused for this game. On any given night, anyone can step up and tonight it just happened to be me."
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