Nearly 12 minutes into Saturday's game against Michigan, head coach Mike Krzyzewski was not pleased with Duke's effort. The Blue Devils only led 17-12--a byproduct of slow transition defense and several missed layups on the other end of the court-when Krzyzewski asked for a 30-second timeout.
All it took for No. 7 Duke to hit its stride was a scolding from the coach.
"He yelled at us pretty bad," freshman Nolan Smith said. "All season, he's never yelled at us like that. As players, we had to respond. We all knew he was upset, and we don't like to make him yell and get upset like that."
Krzyzewski had little reason to scream the rest of the game.
Led by Smith-who scored nine points in a critical 14-2 run following Duke's 30-second timeout-the Blue Devils seized control in the last eight minutes of the first half, building a 17-point halftime lead that ballooned to a 95-67 win over Michigan in Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Duke (9-0) found its rhythm late in the game, scoring 54 points on 65-percent shooting in the second period, but built a comfortable lead in the waning minutes of the first. The Wolverines (3-6) played with the home team for the early part of the opening half, lingering despite receiving no scoring production from the bench. Then Krzyzewski decided he had seen enough, and opted to call a timeout mere seconds before the imminent official stoppage.
"He definitely screamed a lot," said freshman Taylor King, who drained two late 3-pointers to earn his game-high 18 points. "It had to be done, though. He was upset, and he had every right to be. We weren't playing very well at all. Then we turned it around and got into a groove."
The Blue Devils found that groove after the official break. Out of the timeout, sophomore Jon Scheyer, one of five Duke players to score in double figures, swished a 3-pointer from the corner to start the scoring barrage. Smith then took over, sinking two free throws, converting a layup and capping off his own 6-0 mini-run with an emphatic slam. Michigan head coach John Beilein called a 30-second timeout after Smith's last score, but Duke was far from done.
King hit a long jumper off a feed from Scheyer and then Smith furthered his scoring show by nailing his only 3-pointer of the game, prompting Beilein to call another timeout. The Blue Devils had scored on six straight possessions-a far cry from the earlier part of the half, when Duke scored less than 20 points in more than 10 minutes.
After the game, Krzyzewski said he called the timeout not because of his team's lack of offensive production, but because of its transition defense.
"We wanted to press, and at the start of the game we were caught in between and our transition defense was not very good," Krzyzewski said. "We were running up while they were running by us. It took us a while to make that adjustment."
But when they did, the undefeated Blue Devils were nearly unstoppable. Duke beefed up its defense, forcing 15 turnovers with seven steals, and allowed its fast-paced style to dictate the game's tempo. Junior point guard Greg Paulus was a key cog in that transformation. He posted only eight points, but his six assists were significant, considering he had no turnovers for the first time all season.
Paulus' backup, though, was the talk of the team after the game. Smith finished with 17 points on 7-of-9 shooting. He was part of a bench that provided the Blue Devils with an energy boost throughout the game and outscored its Michigan counterpart 27-0 in the first half.
Smith, however, said his output had less to do with providing a spark and more to do with amending Duke's early performance.
"We were trading baskets with them, and we don't like trading baskets with anybody," the freshman said. "We like to get stops and score and go on big runs-not play in spurts."
Unless, of course, that spurt involves a run of 14 unanswered points to send the scalding Blue Devils into a nine-day layoff in a most pleasing fashion.
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