With just eight active scholarship players left on the roster, the maturation process for Duke's freshman quartet—now 50 percent of the team—is accelerating at an even faster pace. Part of that growth is the willingness to speak up, even to a captain.
With Quinn Cook struggling from the field in the first half, that's exactly what Justise Winslow and Jahlil Okafor did. And the senior responded.
Cook scored all 17 of his points after halftime as No. 4 Duke inched its way past a scrappy Georgia Tech squad 72-66 Wednesday at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Enjoying a career year from behind the arc, the captain found most of his success in the lane against the Yellow Jackets, translating his high-intensity on-ball defense into aggressive drives to the basket.
"Justise and Jah, they got on me. They said they needed me, and I wasn’t there in the first half for them," Cook said. "One thing about our team is it doesn’t matter what class you are, you can say whatever to anybody, and they have to respect what you say. That was really it, just freshmen having their teammate’s back, and I responded…. It wasn’t their first time [speaking up]."
The Blue Devils (19-3, 6-3 in the ACC) fell behind early but took a 21-16 lead on a wing 3-pointer by freshman Tyus Jones. The Apple Valley, Minn., native followed that up with consecutive look-away passes in transition that netted Duke three more points.
Duke applied heavy ball-pressure for most of the game and got out in transition when it forced turnovers. The Blue Devils finished with 20 points off turnovers and 12 fast-break points, including back-to-back lay-ups by Winslow. The Houston native finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds for his second consecutive double-double.
As they have in nearly every conference game this year, the last-place Yellow Jackets (10-12, 1-9) kept buzzing, refusing to go quietly despite Duke's best efforts to shoo them away. Georgia Tech scored the last four points of the first half to cut a 38-30 deficit to just four, capitalizing on back-to-back turnovers by Jones, including a lay-in by Robert Sampson—son of former Virginia legend Ralph Sampson—at the buzzer.
"That’s as poor as we’ve ended any half for a long time. We had an eight-point lead and we go for two-for-ones. We just threw the ball away," Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "They scored four points and had the [second-half possession] arrow. I thought that was going to be—if we had lost, I thought the end of the half would’ve been the reason, but we were able to muck it out."
Cook missed all four of his shots in the opening frame but came out strong in the early minutes of the second half, bolstered by his conversation with Winslow and Okafor. The captain turned the corner and scooped in a lay-up with 16:38 to play, then drilled a corner triple, firing up the crowd and himself.
Cook had hit 10 of his last 18 triples entering Wednesday's game, but made the adjustment to attack the Georgia Tech interior with his shots not falling from downtown.
"People always fly out to me because I’m a quote-unquote shooter so I was just trying to get to the basket and create for myself and others," Cook said. "All the stuff that I work out with [Jon] Scheyer and [Jeff] Capel, doing different things than just shooting threes."
His next lay-up seemed destined to put the Blue Devils well on their way to their sixth conference win.
Sophomore Matt Jones—who scored 11 first-half points to help Duke overcome Cook's slow start—corralled a defensive rebound in traffic and shoveled the ball to Winslow. The Houston native never quite got control of the ball, bobbling it in mid-air before launching an outlet pass to Cook down in the corner. The senior drove hard and finished an up-and-under move to push the Duke lead to 51-44.
"Quinn definitely drives to the lanes and he’s the leader of this team, and he never backs down from any situation," Tyus Jones said. "He has a confidence level like nobody I’ve played with. He’s always confident that he’s going to make the right play whether it’s shooting, passing.... He’s just a leader."
Georgia Tech scored nine of the next 12 to cut the lead to one, firing up the Yellow Jacket bench. Redshirt freshman point guard Travis Jorgenson slapped the floor repeatedly waiting for Tyus Jones to bring the ball downcourt.
Cook said the floor-slapping didn't bother him, but the Blue Devils responded by rattling off a 9-3 run of their own to regain a seven-point lead. Winslow put the exclamation point on the spurt by picking off a cross-court Jorgenson pass and swooping in for a transition dunk.
Georgia Tech head coach Brian Gregory called timeout to stop the bleeding, and the Blue Devils slapped the floor as one when play resumed. It didn't help, though, as junior Chris Bolden hit a 3-pointer to slice the deficit to four, but Okafor answered back with a step-through post move to make it 65-59.
Yellow Jacket center Demarco Cox kept Okafor off-balance for much of the night—the freshman was forced to take his shots farther away from the basket than normal. The Chicago native finished with 14 points on 5-of-12 shooting and played his best down the stretch.
A floater by Bolden trimmed the Duke lead to 67-63 with 1:15 remaining, and Georgia Tech got the ball back after Okafor missed a baseline jumper late in the shot clock. But Matt Jones picked off Marcus Georges-Hunt's outlet pass, and Cook salted the game away at the free-throw line.
Duke gets a rematch against No. 8 Notre Dame Saturday at 1 p.m. at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Fighting Irish defeated the Blue Devils 77-73 Jan. 28 in South Bend, Ind.
"The league is unforgiving in that there’s so many good teams," Krzyzewski said. "It wears on you. To be able to win a game in this manner, that’s what keeps you afloat and gets you tournament-ready."
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