CLEMSON, S.C. - One week after speaking in hushed voices of the disappointment of a last-second loss at Wake Forest, the Blue Devils' mood at Littlejohn Coliseum Wednesday night was decidedly different-and decidedly worse.
With the clatter of slammed doors sounding in the background, Duke talked not of disappointment, but of disgust; not of a last-second no-call, but of a 40-minute, 27-point beatdown.
"I've never experienced anything like this," senior David McClure said. "It's disgraceful and embarrassing. We didn't come to play Duke Basketball tonight."
The Blue Devils pitifully put forth their worst offensive performance in exactly 14 years-their 47 points the lowest since Duke was held to 44 in a loss at Clemson Feb. 4, 1995.
That was only a seven-point loss, however, and not the same kind of rout as this one, with the Tigers' defense mauling the Blue Devils all night and putting the game away by the midway point of the second half.
Duke's problems with Clemson's signature full-court press commenced early in the game and early on each possession. The Blue Devils turned the ball over three of the first four times they saw the Tigers' press, leading to easy layups and an early lead for the home team.
"If your pressure is good, teams have to expend a lot of energy getting the ball up the floor," Clemson head coach Oliver Purnell said. "We felt Duke would attack our pressure-I thought they tried to do that, but we got back and fixed it really well. We got back and got our hands on the ball in the frontcourt."
The Tigers got their paws on the ball in the backcourt just as easily, with the Blue Devils struggling to inbound the ball all night. With either Trevor Booker or Raymond Sykes guarding him, Kyle Singler forced passes into the corners of the court-easy bait for the Tigers' traps.
Even when Singler got the ball in cleanly, Duke's guards attempted ill-advised cross-court passes and picked up their dribble when double-teamed. Point guard Nolan Smith did not register an assist while turning the ball over four times and missing six of his seven shots from the field.
Consequently, the Blue Devils never came close to achieving what could be called an offensive rhythm.
"We weren't very strong with the ball," junior Gerald Henderson said. "We were just making unbelievable plays that we don't normally make-most of them, just giving them the basketball."
Perhaps the most embarrassing aspect of a game full of them was the way Duke looked intimidated from start to finish against the No. 10 Tigers. The Blue Devils lacked aggressiveness and, toward the end of the game, seemingly the desire to compete.
All night, it was the veteran fourth-ranked team playing as if it had never seen this kind of pressure defense, never played in this type of atmosphere and never overcome this sort of early deficit.
The result was a snowball effect in the second half, as Clemson overwhelmed Duke and sent the Littlejohn crowd into crescendo after crescendo-the night culminating in chants of "You can't stop us" and "Overrated."
"We've had a lot of struggles on the road. The teams we're playing have thrown the first punch, and we've gotten knocked back," McClure said. "We couldn't stop the onslaught tonight."
It's tough to pinpoint the stretch of the game in which Duke played its worst offensively. The Blue Devils scored a tepid 10 points in the game's final 10 minutes, but that was a venerable boom compared to the six they mustered in the same span of the first half.
"They just outplayed us for 40 minutes; I don't think there was momentum in this game. There was 40 minutes of them dominating," head coach Mike Krzyzewski said.
With the Clemson crowd approaching euphoria late on, Krzyzewski called a timeout with just 27.6 seconds left, extending the moment of shame for his team.
"He just wanted us to see the score, the crowd, how they beat us," Henderson said. "And it was embarrassing."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.