Luol Deng went up strong like he always does. But this time, not even four minutes into last night's game against Virginia, he fell hard on his tailbone and disappeared to the bench for a while, which he hardly ever does.
In the fourth minute of the second half, with Deng still out and Duke up by nine, Shelden Williams tried to snatch another rebound. But when he came down on his tailbone and lay on the Cameron Indoor Stadium floor, face down and writhing in pain, the top-ranked Blue Devils looked like they could be in for an even bigger shock than the thud of a 200-pounder hitting hardwood.
"Luol was really hurting during the first half and at halftime. Our trainer, Dave Engelhardt, and our doctors were able to put him into a position where he thought he might play," head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "And then Shelden got hurt, so you're wondering, 'What the heck's happening?'"
The answer, it turned out, was resilient Duke acting like the dominant team it's been all season. Deng replaced Williams, who returned within the next two minutes, and even when Derrick Byars nailed a three with 13:21 remaining to bring the Cavaliers within 57-54, nothing was going to stop the Blue Devils.
Virginia never got closer as Deng, Williams and Chris Duhon--battling a severe cold himself--led a 17-5 run over the next five minutes as Duke (21-1, 10-0 in the ACC) put away UVa (12-9, 2-8) and won, 93-75.
"When it got 57-54, there's a lot of game pressure on our team, and Luol, Shelden and Chris... really responded well," Krzyzewski said.
J.J. Redick drove for a lay-up to answer Byars' triple, but the Blue Devils really got rolling after Deng's offensive rebound and put-back the next time down the court. Duhon followed a miss by T.J. Bannister on the next play with a coast-to-coast lay-up while fighting through immense traffic. Duhon and Deng were ready to put the game away with an alley-oop after the ensuing time out, but even Deng's arms couldn't pull in the high pass.
Virginia's Elton Brown had an answer, as he seemed to most of the night in racking up 24 points on 9-of-18 shooting, but his offensive rebound and tap-in were not going to be able to hold back the comeback trio once it got out and running.
Two plays later, Duhon sent a no-look pass to Williams for an easy bucket, which Williams would follow up with a drop-step move two plays later. Duhon drove in the open floor again and hit one of two at the line to put Duke up 11--just enough to make the Cavs sweat.
Brown looked to give his team another lift, but Williams stuffed his shot and before Brown could get off the floor, Duhon had thrown a successful lob to Deng, who brought the ball down for a slam and the house down for a party.
Brown lost the ball to Deng on the next play, and this time Duhon ran ahead and skipped a behind-the-back pass to Williams for a tomahawk slam that capped Duke's steadfast surge.
"They came out playing with a lot of confidence, and we were just right there with them, but we have to take it even to a higher level," said Duhon, who broke the Blue Devils career steals record with four on the night, to go with his 12 points and six assists. "That's what we started doing, and our defense got better, we started getting our hands on balls, and we started getting into the open court. We're pretty dangerous when we get off and running, and we finally started to get into a little rhythm, and things started working out for us."
Duke got in a rhythm from the very start as Redick scored eight points in the first 1:18 of the contest, and Daniel Ewing hit three consecutive shots from beyond the arc a few minutes later. But without Deng, who scored all 11 of his points in the second half, the Blue Devils slipped on the defensive end, with Brown pounding Shavlik Randolph and Williams inside while J.R. Reynolds kept Duke honest on the perimeter and scored 11 first-half points.
"We weren't talking really well," Krzyzewski said. "And I'm not sure if that's because 'Louie' was out. Luol has turned out to be an energy guy for us, and he played four minutes in the first half. So we had a lot of energy at the start of the game, but it would dissipate as the half went along, and we just didn't talk well on defense. And they were breaking us down."
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