Malcolm Delaney’s 3-pointer quieted the Cameron crowd. With that bucket, the ACC’s leading scorer put Virginia Tech up 45-44 and issued a challenge to the Blue Devils. Ten minutes left, his trey seemed to say. Take your best shot.
The Blue Devils certainly did. On the next possession, Duke flip-flopped the deficit, and three minutes later, had built the lead to eight. Within that span, junior Nolan Smith and senior Brian Zoubek stamped their marks on the contest and the Blue Devils took control of what Jon Scheyer called a must-win game over Virginia Tech, a gritty Sunday night battle at Cameron Indoor Stadium. With the 67-55 win, No. 6 Duke (22-4, 11-2 in the ACC) gave itself a solid lead in the conference standings with three ACC games left.
“Down the stretch, our guys hit everything,” head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “When [Virginia Tech] took the lead and Delaney got that three to go up 45-44… our guys showed a lot of character in winning this ballgame.”
Using a bucket-and-one, two free throws and a jumper with the shot clock winding down, Smith scored seven points during Duke’s 16-4 answering run over five minutes. His plays bracketed a tremendous 3-point play from Zoubek with 7:08 remaining that had the rest of the team off the bench, Smith jumping on the center’s back and the noise level from the Crazies blowing the roof off the stadium.
The bucket and ensuing foul shot gave Duke a five-point cushion—nothing to sneeze at in a game that didn’t see a whole lot of separation between the two teams until the last few minutes. In fact, those three points were Zoubek’s only points of the game, but they were by no means his only contributions on the offensive end.
“Brian’s play was huge,” junior Kyle Singler said. “He’s been great for us all year, and tonight, he had another great performance. He really helped us out on the boards.”
Zoubek pulled down a total of 16 rebounds, just one shy of his career-high 17 against Maryland last Saturday. Eight of those rebounds against the Hokies (21-5, 8-4) were offensive and led to put-backs or open looks on the perimeter for the rest of the team. As Krzyzewski pointed out, had the Blue Devils been hitting their shots offensively, Zoubek could have ended up with six or seven more assists.
Down the stretch, though, the Blue Devils hit when they needed to most. At the 4:15 mark, Smith tossed the ball to Scheyer, open on the wing, for a 3-pointer. A few minutes later, Scheyer returned the favor, swinging the ball over to Smith, who hit the long-range jumper from directly in front of the Blue Devil bench. Despite Virginia Tech’s—and especially Delaney’s—best attempts, the Hokies could not cut the deficit below six the rest of the way.
And to add insult to injury, Singler drilled one last final trey as the game clock fell below 10 seconds.
“When it comes down the stretch, obviously you want to be in those moments [taking timely shots],” Scheyer said. “They’re good opportunities, and you just need to knock them down. Our team is just really unselfish, so we got good looks down the stretch.”
Those were looks Duke wasn’t getting for the first 30 minutes of the game. At the half, Virginia Tech was shooting a measly 29 percent from the field, managing to exceed the Blue Devils’ anemic 23.3 percent showing. Duke stayed on top largely by outscoring the Hokies from three, hitting six treys in the first period.
“Both teams play outstanding defense, so it’s tough to get good looks,” Krzyzewski said. “I mean, we shoot 29 percent, they shoot 32 percent. It’s tough to come by…. Even when you got an open look, you were looking to see if someone was coming to challenge your shot.”
Scheyer agreed with Krzyzewski that the Blue Devils have hung their hat on defense throughout the year. And even though Duke took good shots Sunday night, Scheyer noted that “[defense] was what you saw tonight.”
In the end, though, winning entails scoring more points than the opposition, and all but four of the Blue Devils’ 67 points were scored by the trio of Singler, Scheyer and Smith. The three were the second-highest scoring trio in the country going into Sunday’s game, but will likely retake the top position after their latest 63-point outing.
Singler led all scorers with 25 points, Smith added 23 and Scheyer chipped in 15 on the night.
Fittingly, it was Singler, Scheyer and Smith that took over during the final stretch of the game after Virginia Tech challenged the Blue Devils to answer.
“Every time out, we just take it possession by possession,” Smith said of that stretch. “We did that, and the best thing was we were able to make those big shots.”
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