Duke knew it couldn’t start off the way it did in Raleigh if it wanted to avoid a second consecutive upset loss. But few expected the Blue Devils to provide the fireworks that encompassed the early stages of Saturday night’s 88-64 win against Virginia Tech in Cameron Indoor Stadium.
First, a Tre Jones three. Then another. Vernon Carey Jr. followed suit with a layup before Cassius Stanley brought the roof down with a trey of his own.
Duke was up 11-2 by the 17:10 mark of the first half, a far cry from the 10-1 deficit it was in at the same point in time three days earlier.
“I wish we could come out like that every single night,” Jones said. “The way we came out tonight was huge. We know that we're going to have to come out like that from here on out because it's almost that time of year.”
After the embarrassment that occurred at N.C. State just a few days ago, a lot of young teams might enter this game deflated, ousted of any prior confidence. But not this team. These Blue Devils came back to Cameron with their heads held high, ready to prove why Wednesday night was a fluke rather than the norm.
By the time Saturday’s game was over, the Blue Devils emerged with their sixth 20-point win in ACC play. Anchoring that victory was 21 points from Stanley and an 11-of-26 team mark from deep.
But it wasn’t the offensive explosion that allowed Duke to shake off its previous loss so quickly. Rather, it was the team’s mindset on the other side of the ball that set the tone.
“It starts with our defense,” senior captain Jack White said. “Defense for us is something we can always control and it's something that we pride ourselves on. We want to be the best defensive team in the country and we can't have any nights off with that. So really just trying to execute on that end.
“We know our offense will come. We know we have the talent to score, but we really pride ourselves on locking people up and making it hard for them to score.”
The Blue Devils limited the Hokies to a 37.3 percent mark from the floor while holding Landers Nolley II, the team’s leading scorer, to a mere three points on 1-of-8 shooting. Countless times Duke turned a sloppy Virginia Tech turnover into an emphatic transition bucket on the other end, and with each basket the team’s confidence came creeping back.
While it may have seemed like the Blue Devils did a good job of forgetting the N.C. State loss, forgetting was the last thing head coach Mike Krzyzewski wanted his players to do during their two-day break.
Instead, Krzyzewski had them reflect long and hard about what happened Wednesday, and how to ensure it won’t happen again.
“We were angry,” Krzyzewski said. “And I was angry at them, but in order to change you have to be angry at yourself. They took responsibility right away…. We had a really hard, good practice [Thursday]. We couldn't have Friday the same practice or else we would be dead today. On Friday we went through scouting, but before we went through scouting, we talked about attitude and belief. Whenever there's adversity, the single biggest gift that God has given to you is attitude. You are in control of attitude. No one else. It’s on you. In order to change things around, you have to have attitude.
“The second thing you have to have is belief. You have to have belief in yourself and your group. On that day, we talked about attitude and that we believe in them. You have to believe in each other. And the third thing is preparation. So now we're going to go on a court, and we're going to prepare. And then the final is today, it’s execution and you turn adversity or something that was bad into an opportunity that makes you better.”
Clearly, Duke carried out that plan into perfection over the last couple days. And if this young squad experiences another similar setback as the season comes to a close, you know it’ll come back fighting just as strong as it did this time out. Kryzyzewski will make sure of it.
“We grew as a group this week,” Krzyzewski said. “Sometimes you need to get punched and get knocked out. But then you get up and figure out why you got knocked out. So that's what they did. Hopefully we don't get knocked out again. But if we do, before the tournament, we're going to do the same thing.”
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