LOUISVILLE, KY.—It’s these kinds of road games where young teams are made. Duke fans learned that best in 2015, when road wins at Louisville and at Virginia turned its season around en route to the program’s fifth national championship.
This year’s Blue Devil squad struggled in its first few premier road games of the season, falling at Ohio State in November and at Florida State less than two weeks ago.
But this time, they finally overcame that raucous road environment, taking down Louisville 74-65 Saturday afternoon at the KFC Yum! Center. The story of the game was Duke’s dominance inside—the Blue Devils grabbed 20 offensive rebounds to the Cardinals’ 10, totaling 22 second-chance points in the process. For a team that had struggled mightily in the offensive rebounding battle all year, those were certainly welcoming numbers for head coach Mike Krzyzewski and company.
"Mike Krzyzewski is a hell of a coach," said Louisville interim head coach Mike Pegues, who was coaching in his first game since former head coach Chris Mack parted ways with the team earlier this week. "He gets every Duke team to be tough.... We gave up 20 offensive rebounds, 20. I'm irate about that. I don't care how tall Mark Williams is, what pick Paolo is—we can't give up 20 offensive rebounds, we can't lose every 50-50 ball."
The Blue Devils held a narrow 62-60 edge with under seven minutes left in the game, with the contest looking like it would be another that went right down to the final seconds. But AJ Griffin disagreed, sinking back-to-back threes to put the Blue Devils (17-3, 7-2 in the ACC) ahead 68-60. From there Duke took control, with a Banchero turnaround jumper and Williams second-chance tap-in virtually ending any chance Louisville had at the upset.
"Really not even thinking about it—just letting it fly," Griffin said of his mindset during the back-to-back threes. "And having the confidence from my coaches and teammates—just letting it fly and just not even thinking about it. Just playing basketball."
"[Griffin's] our best shooter," Krzyzewski added. "He's one of the purest shooters in the country. So I love the fact that our guys are looking for him."
Griffin led Duke with 22 points on a perfect 5-of-5 shooting from downtown, while Mark Williams and Paolo Banchero both notched double-doubles (14 points and 11 rebounds for the former, 11 points and 15 rebounds for the latter).
Louisville (11-10, 5-6) came out fighting in the second half, refusing to let Duke’s talent run away with the game. That fight finally paid off at the 17:34 mark, with Dre Davis swishing a three to tie the game for the first time since the contest’s opening minutes, sending the home fans into an uproar. The Blue Devils quickly regained and maintained a slight lead for the next several minutes, but at the eight-minute mark the tide appeared to turn, with Ellis sinking a lay-up and draining a deep three to tie the game yet again at 60.
Ellis—a Durham native—paced Louisville all afternoon with a team-high 18 points, including countless momentum-swinging shots, but it wasn’t enough for the home team.
Louisville began the game with a full-court press, after other ACC foes such as Miami and Florida State utilized constant pressure to pull off the upset of the conference’s top squad. Krzyzewski quickly called timeout to readjust, however, and for much of the rest of the half it was a Duke show. The Blue Devils went on a 10-0 run over the next 2:09 of game play, transforming a 2-2 game into a 12-2 Duke lead.
The visiting squad’s early domination silenced the home crowd—while the KFC Yum! Center seats more than 22,000 and looked near capacity for Krzyzewski’s final visit to town, it certainly didn’t sound like anything close to 22,000 over the first 10 minutes of game time as the Blue Devils stretched their edge all the way to 22-7.
But the home fans soon found something to cheer for, with a 7-2 Cardinal spurring them right back in the game. Duke proved able to hold its advantage at nine for much of the half, consistently finding a response every time it seemed Louisville was gaining momentum.
Eventually, though, the Blue Devils started to cave—the Cardinals finally figured out how to string together a few stops, slowly cutting their deficit a bucket at a time. Meanwhile, the crowd slowly began gaining traction, getting louder and louder as Duke’s lead fell to seven, then five, then three. The apex came with 28 seconds remaining in the half, as Ellis hesitated for just a second before calmly sinking a three from way downtown to pull Louisville within two at 37-35.
At this point, the Cardinals looked and felt in complete control, all but erasing what was perhaps the Blue Devils’ best start to a game this season. Duke did garner some momentum in the final second of the period, however, with Griffin catching the inbound pass with just 0.6 seconds on the clock and draining the tightly-contested double-clutch three at the buzzer to put the Blue Devils ahead 40-35 entering halftime.
"He's not a rising good player. He's a rising star," Krzyzewski said of Griffin. "And all our guys realize that, so the amount of attention that Paolo gets, or Wendell [Moore gets], helps [Griffin].... They're trying to stop those guys and all of a sudden he's open. And the good thing is the guys look for him. But he's never nervous, he loves to play—it comes from his family. Both his parents are unbelievable athletes and competitors."
Duke will take on Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., Monday night as it continues a stretch of five road games in six contests.
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