The frigid temperatures seemed to sneak inside Cameron Indoor Stadium Thursday night, with Duke and Wake Forest both struggling to heat up offensively.
The Blue Devils offense seemed to thaw in Miami, as Duke put up more than 80 points for the first time since its opener. But the offensive attack reverted Thursday to the stagnant form that has produced the lowest scoring average in the ACC so far this season.
With the Duke offense having difficulty putting points on the board, the Blue Devils turned to their defense once again to carry them to their second-straight 22-point victory and bring them to .500 in league play.
Duke stifled Wake Forest at every turn, neutralizing leading scorer Kyle Visser on the block and pressuring freshman point guard Ishmael Smith on the perimeter.
The Blue Devils surrendered just 40 points, the lowest the team has given up since a 93-40 victory over Seton Hall early last season. It was the lowest in conference play since 1982.
"Our defense won the game," head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "It was rock solid."
The defense bolstered Duke early in the second half, sustaining a double-digit advantage despite a scoring drought of nearly six minutes.
After a Jon Scheyer layup gave Duke a 39-21 lead in the third minute of the second half, the Blue Devils went 5:59 without a basket. The Demon Deacons, however, failed to capitalize, scoring only five points during that span.
"Sometimes you have to [grind]," sophomore guard Greg Paulus said. "If the offense isn't going well, sometimes that can have an effect on the defensive end. We try not to let that happen, because that's when other teams can take an advantage of it."
Duke applied constant pressure on the freshman Smith, who committed eight turnovers on the night. Smith, who entered the game leading the ACC with more than six assists per game, did not record an assist in the contest.
"Smith is a very quick point guard," Krzyzewski said. "Greg did a good job on him. We were able to take away the thing he does best-which is transition-so that helped us a lot."
As a team, the Demon Deacons had 21 turnovers to only five assists, and many of those offensive miscues translated into opportunities for the Blue Devils.
Fast-break layups by Scheyer and DeMarcus Nelson and a transition three-pointer by Paulus sparked a 15-4 run near the end of the first half. The spurt broke the game open, extending the Duke advantage to 16.
Wake Forest didn't challenge the Blue Devils in the second half, as the Duke lead never slipped below a dozen. Josh McRoberts held Visser-the ACC's fourth-leading scorer-to just 12 points, six below his season average. Visser was also saddled with foul trouble for much of the night, preventing the Demon Deacons from finding any rhythm on the offensive end.
"We're playing more energized," Paulus said. "We're getting more loose balls-we're just trying to play as hard as we can."
McRoberts had eight rebounds and three blocks to go along with 11 points and six assists on the offensive end.
Wake Forest has grown accustomed to leaving Cameron empty-handed, as the Demon Deacons suffered their 10th consecutive loss in Durham. Although all 10 of those games have been decided by double figures, few have been as inept as Thursday's 62-40 drubbing.
Wake Forest shot 33.3 percent for the game, including a woeful 28.6 percent in the second half. The Demon Deacons did not help their cause by going 5-for-12 from the foul line and just 3-for-11 from beyond the arc.
"I don't think the aura of the building-as legendary as it is-was the main culprit tonight," Wake Forest head coach Skip Prosser said. "If you don't give yourselves a shot-even a bad shot-at the offensive end, you're not going to win."
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