Duke Tromps North Carolina Late

Sports News - February 11th, 2010 - Written By John Ritter

North Carolina was hoping to get a boost to it's season hosting it's arch rival with a certain trip to the NIT looming. But the fact that they even kept it close at the half was more of the rim's doing than the Tar Heels.

Duke couldn't buy a bucket for the first 20 minutes, and ended up shooting only 31.4-percent from the floor. But that was enough against North Carolina, which didn't have a single player with more than 13 points, and shot a season-low 35-percent from the floor.

The Blue Devils handed their rivals their fourth-straight home loss on Wednesday night, a first since 2002, covering the 6 1/2-point spread in a 64-54 win in Chapel Hill.

The forgettable '02 campaign was also the last time the Tar Heels scored so few points.

Jon Scheyer made 5-of-9 from three-point land, and both Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler reached double-digits once again. Duke's three top scorers led the breakaway late as they outscored their rivals 36-27 in the second half to keep a reasonable cushion at the top of the ACC standings.

North Carolina came into the game with a three-rebound advantage against Duke over the course of the season. But the Blue Devils' tougher front court, led by Mason Plumlee, grabbed seven more offensive boards and finished with nine more overall.

“I thought it was a gritty performance,” Krzyzewski said. “The ball was not going in and they blocked a lot of shots. … For us to keep up our defense and rebounding when the ball wasn’t going in the basket was a big thing.”

It was Duke's first win over North Carolina since February of 2008, and only it's second since 2006. It took control of the series back now that it seems the Tar Heels have some serious issues to iron out, if it didn't already seem like it before.

“It just sucks losing to these guys,” said Smith. “To do it the amount of games we did in a row, and now to finally get this win, it feels great. We played a great game and hopefully we can start this stretch of us winning games against them.”

Will Graves led the team with 13 points and 10 rebounds, but no other teammate came close to those numbers. Now head coach Roy Williams is in real danger of missing the NCAA Basketball Tournament for the first time since his rookie season with Kansas in '88.

“I thought we had the intensity the first 30 minutes that we needed and should have had the whole season,” Williams said. “After that...they seemed hungrier to get (to the boards) and we just didn’t go a good job of boxing out or chasing the ball.”

North Carolina actually led by four midway through the second half, but Duke clawed back to quiet the crowd when Plumlee hauled in an offensive rebound and slammed home a reverse dunk to take the lead back 47-45. The Blue Devils then pushed that lead to 54-48 on five points from Scheyer and two by Smith, and they never looked back.