Last year's historic season ultimately resulted in Duke's fifth national championship, but it's easy to forget that the 2014-15 season was not free of some of the woes that have plagued this year's Blue Devil squad.
Last year's star-studded group won its first 14 games of the season before faltering just a few miles from home against unranked N.C. State and then falling hard at home against a talented but underrated Miami team just two days later. After the surprise skid, the Blue Devils took time to regroup and focus on the future of the team. The result? A decisive 11-point victory against No. 6 Louisville at the KFC Yum! Center that—in retrospect—marked a decisive turning point in Duke's season.
So perhaps Monday's seven-point victory against this year's edition of the highly-regarded Cardinals will—in foresight—mark a critical turning point in the Blue Devils' season once again.
"I think we really needed a win like this," sophomore Grayson Allen said. "Each game, we’re building. I think it could have been really easy for us with the losing streak we’ve been on to be happy with our past win [against N.C. State], and with a quick turnaround as well, it can be hard to look past that. I think we did a good job preparing for this game, and it was a really big one in front of our home crowd."
The Blue Devils' 72-65 win was their first against a ranked opponent this season, but Duke will have no shortage of opportunities to add to that number in the next two weeks. After righting the ship last week with wins at Georgia Tech and against the Wolfpack, Duke continued to make strides without injured senior captain Amile Jefferson heading into its most grueling stretch of the season. There is no sight of relief after notching a win against the Cardinals, because No. 7 Virginia comes to Cameron Indoor Stadium Saturday afternoon, followed by a short road trip to No. 9 North Carolina Feb. 17 and a return trip to Louisville Feb. 20.
This stretch could make or break the Blue Devils' season. Players, coaches and fans knew it to be true as tip-off neared Monday. It was a given, then, that there would be a lot of pressure on a young Duke team—which has suffered three of its four ACC defeats by five points or less—that had come up short down the stretch in games past. What was less certain, though, was how the young, depth-strapped Blue Devils would respond to that pressure.
But Duke's freshmen delivered big play after big play throughout the second half, carrying the Blue Devils to a win. At first, the outcome appeared certain in early in the second half as Duke built a 15-point lead, but it suddenly hung squarely in the balance when the Cardinals grabbed a 58-57 edge with 6:12 to go.
Brandon Ingram scored 14 of his 18 points after intermission—including six critical free throws down the stretch while serving as the team's primary ball-handler—and Luke Kennard poured in six points immediately after Louisville rattled off a 15-2 run to crawl within one earlier in the half.
Derryck Thornton only scored four points, but the Chatsworth, Calif., native delivered the back-breaking bucket with a shot-clock-beating bank shot with 33 seconds remaining.
"They keep growing up and they keep playing hard," Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "They’re getting older, not necessarily in age but in experience."
In what was arguably Duke's most impressive and most hard-fought win of the season, every Blue Devil put his grit on full display to secure the victory despite giving up a 15-point lead in the final stretch of the game. The most convincing aspect of this win—aside from Ingram's total command of the game in the final minutes—was the entire team's ability to stand strong in the face of adversity that, as recently as two weeks ago, could have buckled the Blue Devils and sent them to another loss on the back end of a Saturday-Monday turn-around.
Duke still has some growing up to do—with or without the return of Jefferson—but Monday's victory was an indication that the Blue Devils have learned from their four losses in five games and grown through the process. The short bench may just be finding the footing it has been desperately looking for all season long—and it may be blossoming just in time.
"We’re all playing so well together right now, and we’re growing up as a team," Kennard said. "We’re maturing individually and as a group together. We’re playing well together and we’re all in. We listen to what the coaches say and we just buy in. When we do that—when we play well together and share the ball and get stops on defense to let our offense take over—we can be a pretty good team.”
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