NEW YORK - The anticipated matchup at sold-out Madison Square Garden between prized point guards never materialized, at least not between Duke's Jason Williams and freshman Omar Cook of St. John's.
Some had predicted that Cook, the Red Storm's leading scorer and distributor, could hold his own against national-player-of-the-year candidate Williams, but the St. John's superstar instead found himself handcuffed by his freshman foil from Duke. For 29 minutes yesterday, Duke sixth man Chris Duhon emerged as the silent giant of the Blue Devils' 91-59 stomping of St. John's. Assigned the task of containing one of the most potent threats in the Big East, Duhon reinvigorated his team's inconsistent outside attack and simultaneously put the clamps down on Cook, who registered his least productive and most erratic game of the season.
Playing in front of an enthusiastic crowd only a short distance from his hometown of Brooklyn, Cook made only two field goals and turned the ball over eight times, matching his career-low in the former category and setting a new career-worst in the latter. In addition, the frequently sensational ballhandler who has tallied double-digit assists in more than one-third of his games-including a 17-assist performance in mid-November-was limited to eight yesterday, only three of which occurred when his team unraveled after halftime.
"My performance today wasn't as good as it should have been, so I think that's why the game was so far spread away," said Cook, who described his postgame mood as "depressed."
Cook actually did hold his own early in the game, when his penetration and passing kept his team within single-digits until the first half's final buzzer. Through the first 20 minutes, Cook broke down Duke's defense and helped expose a weak interior that gave up 19 first-half points to St. John's forward Anthony Glover. Glover found the best parking space in New York as the 6-foot-6 junior camped out in the small orange semicircle directly under Duke's basket, where he outmuscled and outpositioned Blue Devil center Carlos Boozer for nine first-half field goals.
In the second half, however, with Duhon working exclusively toward cutting off the lanes from Cook, Glover became a non-factor. Without any open passing lanes to find his teammates, Cook endured a miserable half in which Duke's freshman hemmed him well outside reasonable shooting range. The St. John's star chucked up seven wild shots, none of which connected and five of which came from three-point territory.
On the other end of the court, Duhon was equally dominant.
As typically sharp-shooting teammates Shane Battier, Mike Dunleavy and Nate James put forth only a 3-for-10 outing from beyond the arc, Duhon picked up the slack for the second straight game. One game off his 20-point eruption against Virginia last Wednesday, Duhon charged straight out of the gate as soon as coach Mike Krzyzewski inserted him into the lineup. Following his coach's direction, Duhon aggressively sought his shot and again proved to be the team's most reliable threat, hitting 4-of-7 three-point attempts for 15 points.
"The day before the Virginia game, Coach said, 'I'm letting you loose out there, just go out there and play ball and have fun,'" Duhon said.
After barely factoring into the scoring column in any of Duke's first 24 games, Duhon has at last begun to live up to his preseason billing. With only four regular-season games left on the slate, Duhon's teammates hope the guard who Krzyzewski called the ACC's best first-year player has at last found a role he can be comfortable in-stardom.
"We have to just show him that it's all right to be a great player," Battier said. "When you're a freshman, sometimes you're afraid of being great because you're trying to fit in. All of us tell him every chance we get to be Chris Duhon."
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