Men's hoops extends winning streak, wins ACC openers

Back-to-back losses to start the season would be a cause for worry for most teams. Duke, however, isn't like most teams.

By turning the losses into valuable lessons, the Blue Devils haven't lost a game since, and now have won 11 straight games. They have opened the ACC season with a pair of road wins: a 109-100 in overtime over Virginia and an 80-70 over No. 12 Maryland Sunday in Cole Field House.

"You keep getting better by being in tough situations," said coach Mike Krzyzewski. "If we hadn't played such a tough schedule on the road early on in the season, I don't think we would have won the last two games."

Of course, it seems that Duke (11-2, 2-0 in the ACC) would beat the Terrapins (11-4, 0-2) no matter what the circumstances were. The Blue Devils have won 29 of the past 34 contests against Maryland, including 13 of the last 15 games at Cole, where Maryland had won 14 games in a row before Sunday.

"When you come into Cole, we're so despised it's ridiculous," Shane Battier said. "But we've learned to enjoy it, and turn that into energy for us and really come out and turn the tables on them."

In direct contrast with the Virginia game, in which both teams seemed incapable of stopping the other from scoring, the Duke defense clamped down against the Terrapins. Maryland shot only 34 percent from the field, with center Lonny Baxter going only 7-of-23 and star Terence Morris shooting only 6-of-15.

Battier led the defensive effort with a career-high seven blocks, while senior Chris Carrawell showed off his leadership and versatility to the national television audience.

"Carrawell was fabulous," Krzyzewski said. "I don't know how many things I asked him to do, but he did all of them. Handle the ball, shoot, lead, play defense, inbound the ball, he just did everything for us."

"We just follow our upperclassmen," Boozer said. "Shane, Nate [James], they just lead us and tell us what to expect. [The ACC] is a lot more intense, and each play is huge in a game like this."

After taking the lead three minutes into the game, the Blue Devils never trailed again, and even pushed the lead up to 16 in the second half after a 13-1 run made the score 64-48 with seven minutes left.

A three-pointer by Blake with 1:29 to go in the game cut the lead to seven, but four straight free throws down the stretch by Carrawell ended the comeback attempt.

One of the few negatives to come out of the game was the sloppy play of Jason Williams, who scored only six points and had eight turnovers to five assists, and seemed to be outplayed by Maryland's talented freshman Blake (eight assists, six steals). This came after a 5-for-18 shooting performance against the Cavaliers.

Instead of alarm, this brought back fond memories for Krzyzewski.

"I remember Bobby Hurley," the coach said. "One time he went to Chapel Hill and had 10 turnovers, and looked like he'd never dribbled a ball before."

Krzyzewski said Williams was still a "work in progress," like the team itself. What excites both the players and the coaching staff the most is the team's potential.

"Our team has heart, and they do make big plays," said Krzyzewski. "We invented new ways to break the press in the last two minutes, we wanted to change basketball rules as far as half-court, but when we did have a opening we took it to the hole strong.

"All of a sudden, we did something really bad, and then all of a sudden we did something really great."

That statement would be an apt way of describing the game Wednesday at Virginia, where Duke fell behind by as many as 10 points in the second half before coming back. The game went back-and-forth in the final three minutes and when a fade-away three-pointer by Williams hit the rim, the game went into overtime.

Williams opened the extra session with a three-pointer and assisted on a Battier dunk on the next possession. Duke scored every time it had the ball in overtime en route to a nine-point win.

Carrawell led the team with 25 points, while Mike Dunleavy added 21 coming off the bench.

The two conference games gave a strong indication of how much Krzyzewski will use his bench this year. In each game, six players (starters Boozer, Battier, Williams, Carrawell and James, and reserve Dunleavy) played more than 25 minutes, while forward Nick Horvath and center Matt Christensen were used sparingly. No other player was used.

Note: Before starting the conference schedule, Duke played three tune-up home games after exams: a 44-point whipping of Davidson sandwiched between 41-point victories over doormats North Carolina A&T and William & Mary. The win against William & Mary was the 600th in Cameron Indoor Stadium for Duke, which also extended its school- and ACC-record home winning streak to 42 games.