The men's basketball team survived a couple of breathtaking scares from unrelenting Detroit Saturday night, overcoming an early 12-0 deficit and a last-minute injury to point guard Chris Duhon to escape with a 67-56 opening night victory at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
No. 2 Duke (1-0) went scoreless for more than seven minutes to start its season, missing its first 11 shots before tightening thinågs up with its transition game to end the half. The Blue Devils took the lead for the first time with 9:10 remaining in the game and never looked back, riding J.J. Redick and Luol Deng on a 20-5 run to avoid what had all the makings of a shocker.
"I thought we were a little bit nervous to begin with. It shows how we're still young," head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "We missed a couple things early that would get you off of that, and it gave them just a little bit more confidence and us a little bit less. The last 30 minutes of the game, we played very, very well defensively. The last 30 minutes was outstanding defense by both teams, and we had a little bit of firepower."
After Shelden Williams hit two free throws to give Duke its first advantage at 45-43, the Titans' sparkplug point guard James Theus missed a layup, forcing the ball out of bounds and forcing the hand of Detroit head coach Perry Watson to call a timeout.
Deng, playing in his first career game, hit one of two free throws after a foul to bring the Cameron crowd to a feverish pitch that the Titans had consistently quieted throughout the evening. But this time, Williams punched away the ball in the post to Deng, who started a fast break, took two defenders to the baseline and reached his lengthy arms over them to nail a tough jump shot.
"There were a couple of times where I looked hesitant because I missed a couple of shots," said Deng, who finished with 21 points and eight rebounds. "But everybody kept telling me to stick with my shots and they would come. And during that run that we had, they did come." Two plays later in the run, Redick planted himself in the paint, spun completely around and hit a floater to give the Blue Devils a five-point lead. But Detroit forward Elijah Warren answered with a three-pointer over Deng. Duke then lost some of its fervor, holding the ball while looking for creases in a revving Titan defense. With two seconds remaining on the shot clock, then, Duhon sniped a three, a shot Krzyzewski called the biggest of the game.
From there, Redick followed up two consecutive Trojan turnovers by cutting from beyond the arc and into the paint, where he would make two consecutive Detroit players foul out and where he hit four straight free throws. Daniel Ewing and Deng then connected on back-to-back three-pointers, giving the Blue Devils a 63-48 margin and a sigh of relief.
"I thought we handled the end of the clock real well. We got a couple threes," Krzyzewski said. "[Detroit] didn't come here to give up. They were going to play the game throughout. But that put us in some really good end-of-game situations."
Near the very end, though, Duhon penetrated through the bullish Detroit frontline and rose up for a layup, only to collapse on his way down underneath a folding chair on the baseline. Writhing in pain, the senior captain stumbled off the court under his own volition but had to slink onto a seat at the end of the Duke bench to watch the remainder of the game.
"It's just my hip flexor," Duhon said. "It's not too big, but it just cramped up on me at the end." He had initially injured the right hip when he fell into the crowd on a steal attempt in the waning minutes of a surprising first half, one that saw the Blue Devils shoot 29 percent overall and 3-for-13 from three-point range.
Duke hadn't even put the ball through the hoop for the first nine minutes of the half, relying instead on a goal-tending violation that gave Deng the team's first two points. But coming out of a Titan timeout with just under six minutes remaining before halftime and the Blue Devils trailing 22-9, Duhon drew a five-second violation on Detroit's Rulon Harris.
Ewing followed with a three-pointer and, with the Cameron Crazies roaring, Duke started running. Redick drove to the hoop after a steal and hit two free throws--he was 10-for-10 from the charity stripe on the night--before taking a kick-out pass from a streaking Ewing and nailing a three. Detroit was whistled for an offensive foul on the other end of the court, which Deng promptly answered with a spot-up three-pointer of his own.
The Blue Devils would close to within two points at halftime, mostly by creating turnovers and muscling inside to get to the free throw line, a formula that helped solve a Detroit shock, eventually. "It was kind of a strange game, a strange team to play in the fact that they have so many guys who can handle the ball, so it forced us to be more perimeter-oriented," Krzyzewski said. "If we would have imposed our will early, maybe we could have gotten to do our thing. But we didn't, and it turned out to be a heck of a game."
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