With a defense slightly tougher than week-old bread an offense that found the bottom of the net time after time with long-range shots and powerful dunks from close, and, perhaps most importantly, a rocking and rolling Cameron Indoor Stadium filled with chants and cheers from wall to wall, Duke's men's basketball team stifled visiting Maryland 86-63 in a commanding fashion Sunday afternoon.
And on the heals of a nervous time, coming after back-to-back losses to North Carolina State and Wake Forest last week--its only ACC defeats of the year--all is well again in Blue Devil Land.
"Our guys really responded well to what's happened this week, losing two really tough games," Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "We came out and, I thought, played really well today. We got back to playing better defense."
J.J. Redick paced the Blue Devils (22-3, 11-2 in the ACC) with an efficient day of marksmanship, making 6-of-10 shots, including 5-of-9 from three-point range, and teammate Shelden Williams logged a double-double with 18 points and 11 rebounds while freshmen Luol Deng added 17 in 24 minutes of play, including his team's first nine points of the day. Guard John Gilchirst topped all Maryland (13-10, 4-7) players with 14 points and eight rebounds.
"It's great for our team the way we played," Redick said. "It's also great to beat Maryland."
With the teams tied at 11-11 and fewer than 16 minutes to go in the first half, Maryland, catalyzed by Gilcrist, was giving Duke fits with its dribble penetration. Then Krzyzewski sent Sean Dockery to neutralize Gilchrist and the Terrapins' ability to get to the basket.
The move worked, as Gilchrist would score only six more points after pouring in eight of his team's first 11 points, and Dockery would end the game with six steals and countless more disruptions of Maryland's perimeter-motion offense.
"I thought Dockery really turned the ball around for us," Krzyzewski. "When we first started the ball game, they were penetrating against us. When we inserted Sean and took Chris [Duhon] off the ball, Sean's defense on the ball and Chris off the ball got us back to a real high level. I thought Dockery was huge for us today."
From there it was a big Duke surge--the Blue Devils outscored the Terps 17-3 when they caught the visitors in a six-minute dry spell--which transformed an early, close contest to an extended game of doomed catchup.
Led by a renewed effort on defense, Duke took the lead and never looked back, jumping to a 17-point halftime advantage.
"The mindset was to get our edge back on defense, instead of just outscoring teams, to come in here and just stop a team," Deng said.
"The plan tonight was to stop Maryland instead of outscoring them, and that's what we did. Every time we got a stop, we were excited to be on offense, especially when Maryland took about 33 or 34 seconds to shoot the ball and you get a stop, that's just a great feeling to run down on offense."
The Cameron Crazies, who have come under some criticism this season for leaving the stands unfilled for some ACC contests, were praised by Krzyzewski for the atmosphere they created in Cameron after tenting outside the gymnasium for as long as seven weeks in some cases before Sunday.
"The fans were great," Krzyzewski said. "We didn't have to shut off the lights or bring artificial crap in here. It was just human beings being genuinely supportive of their team. What a refreshing sight. They were cheering for their team and I'm really proud of them. Those kids are great."
The elevated noise level might have had an effect on Maryland, which made playing catchup even harder on itself by making big numbers when it wanted small ones and vice versa, giving the ball away 23 times and making 52 percent of its free-throws.
In addition to its troubles with taking care of the ball on the court, the Terps had problems when they wanted to put the ball into the hoop as well, managing to connect on only 37 percent of their shots from the field.
"They do what they do," said Maryland head coach Gary Williams. "When they get on a roll, they roll probably as well as anyone in the country. We tried to stop them with timeouts in the first half, but the thing you find out over the years is that you have to score. You have to match their offense with your offense, and we couldn't do that today."
Nevertheless, Blue Devil fans can sleep easy tonight.
"We all said it to ourselves to stop worrying about the offense and play defense, and our offense would come," Deng said. "To come out here tonight and just play defense and win again because of our defense, it's just a great feeling and just makes us believe in ourselves again.. This was a very important game. Nobody wants to lose two in a row, and definitely nobody wants to lose three in a row."
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