Two smiles told the story for Andre Dawkins and Austin Rivers Thursday night.
Dawkins’ moment came midway through the first half, after his fifth 3-pointer of the night bounced around on the rim before finally falling. He ran backwards down the court, a grin on his face, content after proving his breakout performance against Clemson Sunday night was not a fluke.
Rivers, meanwhile, struggled in that first half, at one point emphatically arguing with Ryan Kelly after the co-captain missed Rivers open in the corner. But after a lackluster start, Rivers came out with a new energy in the game’s final period. His aggressiveness and swagger returned, punctuated by a banked-in 3-pointer midway through the half that Rivers only saw from the floor after being knocked down.
Rivers, too, turned and smiled as he ran down the court. Like his teammate, his catharsis had come.
“I thought I deserved one of those,” Rivers said. “For that to fall, it was the basketball gods helping me out.”
Duke’s guards were indeed the story in the team’s 91-73 win over Wake Forest. Dawkins scored 21 points in the first half on 7-for-11 shooting from beyond the arc, giving him 45 points in his last three halves of basketball. Rivers, meanwhile, did his scoring in the second half, finishing with 20 total points after shooting 4-for-5 in the final period.
Krzyzewski’s confidence in both Rivers and Dawkins showed at different points in the blowout victory. Inserted into the starting lineup, Dawkins started slowly in the new role—the junior had more turnovers than points during his first stint in the game.
But Krzyzewski stuck with his sharpshooter and was rewarded. An offensive rebound by Ryan Kelly netted Dawkins a wide-open shot, his first basket of the night. That prompted a stretch in which Dawkins scored 21 of the Blue Devils’ next 28 points.
“I thought he was nervous a little bit,” Krzyzewski said of Dawkins’ start. “[Kelly] made a big play for him. On a missed free throw he tapped it out and Andre didn’t have to think about it. He just did what he does, but Ryan made the play.... But you could see he wasn’t himself. When he hit the three off of the tap out that really helped him.”
Dawkins’ defense continued to quietly mature as well. Dawkins dove on the floor on multiple occasions for loose balls and smartly used his fouls to turn uncontested Demon Deacon layups into trips to the free throw line. When the Duke lead shrank to 11 with Wake Forest on the line as the half wound down, it was Dawkins who took the lead, talking to his team in the huddle.
Rivers, meanwhile, returned to the starting lineup in the second half after starting the game on the bench for a first time in the Duke uniform. Despite his early struggles, the freshman justified Krzyzewski’s trust by not only attacking the rim with confidence, but doing so in a balanced and controlled manner.
“It pissed me off. That was his whole intention, to piss me off,” Rivers said of Krzyzewski’s decision to start him on the bench. “When he did it I was so angry. I was blocking people’s shots [in practice], talking trash, getting in fights with people, I was so angry. But that was his intention. He’s a genius and it got me going again.”
Having two dynamic scorers in Rivers and Dawkins will only be a boon for Duke as ACC play continues. And given the confidence both shooting guards have developed, there should be more smiles the rest of the year.
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