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HOUSTON (AP)—Nolan Smith scored 29 points and Duke returned to the Final Four for the first time in six years by beating Baylor 78-71 on Sunday in the South Regional final, ending the Bears’ charming run to college basketball redemption.
Jon Scheyer added 20 points for the Blue Devils (33-5), the only No. 1 seed to advance to Indianapolis. It is their 11th trip to the Final Four under coach Mike Krzyzewski.
In the national semifinals for the first time since 2004, Duke will play East Regional champion West Virginia on Saturday night. The Blue Devils have won 11 of their last 12 regional finals under Krzyzewski, but haven’t won a national title since 2001.
Smith and Scheyer helped Duke offset a poor game from junior forward Kyle Singler, who was 0 for 10 from the field and made only five free throws. It was the first time in his college career he failed to hit a field goal.
LaceDarius Dunn had 22 points and Ekpe Udoh scored 18 for the Bears (28-8), whose program was in shambles when coach Scott Drew took over in the wake of murder and scandal less than seven years ago.
After tying the game for the 12th time on a free throw with 3:36 left, Smith missed his second attempt. But Lance Thomas grabbed the rebound and quickly passed the ball right back to Smith, who hit a 3-pointer from the right wing to put Duke up 64-61.
Scheyer extended the lead to six with his fifth 3-pointer.
Tweety Carter and Quincy Acy had 12 points each for Baylor.
The Baylor Bears are 28-7 and one of two schools along with Kansas State from the Big 12 in the Elite eight. The Bears have been consistent all year having dominated Texas twice and losing close games to Kansas State twice and once to Kansas as they went 11-5 in conference play.
Scott Drew is in his 7th year at Waco and by getting to the round of 8 has led his team further than they have advanced since 1950. Baylor is a fairly young team that plays only one senior in its 7 man rotation.
Here are the starters and key reserves.
6-4 Jr. Lacedarius Dunn 19.5 points, 4.8 rebounds
5-11 Jr. Tweety Carter 15.1 points, 2.8 rebounds, 5.3 assists
6-10 Jr. Ekpe Udoh 13.8 points, 9.7 rebounds
7-0 Sr. Josh Lomers 6.7 points, 3.8 rebounds
6-10 Soph. Anthony Jones 6.3 rebounds, 4.8 rebounds
6-7 Soph. Quincy Acy 9.2 rebounds, 5.1 rebounds
6-1 Fr. A.J. Walton 3.9 points
The Bears average 77.1 points and give up 65.3 per game. They shoot 48.8% from the field and give up 38.3%. They shoot 38.8% from three on 7.1 made, while giving up 32.8% on 6.8 made per game. They out rebound their opponents by 6.7 per game and commit 13.7 turnovers, while forcing 12.1.
Notes: The game is scheduled for 5:05 pm and will be televised by CBS.
HOUSTON (AP)—This is more like it for Coach K and Duke.
The top-seeded Blue Devils returned to the round of eight for the first time since 2004, with Kyle Singler and Jon Scheyer helping them pull away in the second half Friday night for a 70-57 win over Purdue in the South Regional semifinals.
Singler scored 24 points and Scheyer added 18, snapping out of a shooting slump just in time.
Duke (32-5) will play third-seeded Baylor in Sunday’s regional final after clearing a nagging hurdle that had some wondering if the mighty program was losing its edge.
The Blue Devils had lost in the round of 16 in three of the past five seasons, but now stand one victory from their 11th Final Four appearance under coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Duke kept marching through the NCAA tournament while other favorites are falling by the wayside.
Scheyer, Duke’s leading scorer, was 5-for-18 from the field in Duke’s first two NCAA tournament games. He went 5-for-9 in the second half after missing his first six shots and also went 7-for-8 from the foul line.
It was 31-all with 15 1/2 minutes left before the Blue Devils broke away.
Brian Zoubek grabbed 14 rebounds and Duke dominated the undersized Boilermakers inside, as expected. The absence of injured do-everything forward Robbie Hummel finally caught up with fourth-seeded Purdue (29-6), which lost in the regional semifinals for the second straight season.
Hummel tore his right ACL in late February and watched Friday’s loss in street clothes from the bench.
Duke will take on 4th seeded Purdue in Houston on Friday night in the Sweet Sixteen. The Boilermakers are 29-5 and finished tied for first in the Big Ten with a 14-4 record. Matt Painter in his 5th year at his alma mater in West Lafayette, Indiana has rebounded his team after arguably his best player Robbie Hummel went down with a torn ACL on February 24th. They have gone 5-2 since his injury.
Purdue is a ball control team that is still very experienced even with the loss of Hummel. They will start 2 seniors, 2 juniors and a sophomore. Here are the starters and key reserves.
6-4 Jr. E'Twaun Moore 16.4 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.8 assists
6-10 Jr. Jajauan Johnson 15.3 points, 7.2 rebounds, 2.0 assists
6-3 Sr. Chris Kramer 6.7 points, 3.0 rebounds
6-4 Sr. Keaton Grant 6.6 points, 2.8 rebounds
5-9 Soph. Lewis Jackson 2.6 points
6-5 Fr. Kelsey Barlow 3.4 points
6-3 Soph. Ryan Smith 2.7 points
6-2 Fr. John Hart 2.4 points
The Boilermakers average 70.9 points and give up 61.0 a game. They shoot 44.5% from the field and give 39.9%. They shoot 31.9% on 5.4 made and give up 35.2% on 5.2 made per game. They are being out rebounded by their opponents by 1.0 per game. They commit 11.0 turnovers a game and force 15.7.
Notes: The game is scheduled for 9:57 and will televised by CBS. Jim Nantz and Clark Kellog will be the announcers. Purdue's scoring average has dropped nearly ten points to 61.1 per game since Hummel went down. He was also their second leading scorer and rebounder at 15.7 points and 6.8 rebounds.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP)—Duke relied on an old, trusted ally to reach the round of 16 in the NCAA tournament.
Defense has always been the foundation of Mike Krzyzewski’s team, and the top-seeded Blue Devils sent their coach of three decades into a regional semifinal for the 19th time with a stellar performance in a 68-53 victory over California on Sunday.
After winning both the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season and tournament titles, they are playing the type of suffocating defense that could put Krzyzewski back in the Final Four for an 11th time.
The Blue Devils last reached the national semifinals in 2004, not that their coach feels as though they’ve let him down lately.
“You know, I hate when somebody compares those teams of the last couple years with our national championship teams, and they say they underachieved,” Krzyzewski said. “Are you kidding me? They won 30, 29 games. But they were limited teams, and they couldn’t play the defense that this team can play because we have big guys.”
Exploiting a huge advantage in size and depth in the frontcourt, the Blue Devils opened a double-digit lead in the first half and Cal never seriously threatened to get back into the game.
Brian Zoubek, Duke’s light-scoring, 7-foot-1 center, had 14 points and 13 rebounds while teaming with Lance Thomas and reserves Miles and Mason Plumlee to dominate a short-handed Cal frontline featuring 6-foot-8 Duke transfer Jamal Boykin—and little else.
Nolan Smith led the Blue Devils (31-5) with 20 points and spearheaded Duke’s trademark man-to-man defense that made it difficult for Cal’s high-scoring trio of Jerome Randle, Patrick Christopher and Theo Robertson to get uncontested shots.
Hounded by relentless “D,” Randle—the Pac-10 player of the year—was limited to 12 points on 5-for-12 shooting.
“From the get-go, I really wanted to make it clear that I was going to be in his jersey the whole game. That was the game plan,” Smith said. “I just stuck with him with the help of my big guys. They really helped me out, and I owe it all to them. They made my job easy fighting over screens and giving them no open looks.”
Kyle Singler scored 17 for Duke, which advanced to the South Regional semifinals in Houston, where the Blue Devils will face fourth-seeded Purdue on Friday. Zoubek’s 6-for-6 shooting more than made up for leading scorer Jon Scheyer going 1 of 11 and finishing with seven points.
With starting forward Omondi Amoke suspended for an unspecified team violation, Cal (24-11) once again went with a three-guard lineup that overwhelmed Louisville in the opening round because of exceptional 3-point shooting.
Krzyzewski said he couldn’t remember the Blue Devils facing a team with so many players capable of stretching a defense. But Cal’s lack of size and depth under the basket hurt the Golden Bears all day.
Boykin, who transferred from Duke after spending a little more than a season with the Blue Devils, led Cal with 13 points and 11 rebounds. Randle had 12 points and Robertson 10, but the Golden Bears misfired on nine of 12 3-point attempts and Christopher was held to two points—14 below his average.
“They got us back on our heels early. There really was no turning point, it was a steady diet,” Robertson said. “They executed so well and did a great job communicating.”
One day after the 17th anniversary of Cal beating Duke in the second round to stop the Blue Devils’ bid for a third consecutive national title, the Golden Bears simply didn’t have the firepower to block the Blue Devils’ path to Houston.
Jason Kidd was the point guard on that 1993 Cal team. Randle was one of the keys to the Golden Bears winning their first conference title in 50 years this season, but Duke never allowed him to get into a rhythm.
“If we played Duke 10 times, I think they would win more than us,” California coach Mike Montgomery said. “We were a little overmatched, and there’s not much we could do about it.”
The game plan was to make Cal work hard for shots, even the NBA-range 3s that Randle, Robertson and Christopher like to launch. The Golden Bears made four of them to open an early 18-point lead against Louisville, but were just 1 of 6 from behind the arc in falling behind 37-34 at halftime against Duke.
When Zoubek and Duke’s best defender, Thomas, weren’t clogging the lane on defense and taking advantage of their size to score easy baskets on offense, the Plumlee brothers were doing the job for the Blue Devils.
Zoubek and the Plumlees were a combined 7 for 7 from the field in the opening half. Cal made one run in the second half, scoring eight straight points to pull within 44-37 before Zoubek’s tip-in started a burst that put the game away.
The big Duke center put an exclamation point on the win with a ferocious, uncontested dunk. He celebrated heading back down the floor.
“For me, two points is two points. Getting the dunk felt great. I haven’t been able to get that many open ones where I could just go up without any contact, and I was excited,” he said. “I knew that was a big point in the game where we just created a little separation there. So it felt good.”
The Duke Blue Devils will see a couple of familiar faces when they take on the California Bears in Sunday in the second round of the NCAA tournament in Jacksonville. Coach Mike Montgomery is in his second year at Cal after 18 years at Stanford and a short stint in the NBA faced Duke on two occasions while in Palo Alto and senior forward Jamal Boykin is of course a transfer from Duke three years ago.
The Bears are 24-10 and are coming off an easy 77-62 win over Louisville in the first round.
The Bears sport a balanced attack led by four senior starters who all score in double figures. Here is the starters and key reserves.
5-10 Sr. Jerome Randle 18.8 points, 4.3 assists
6-5 Sr. Patrick Christopher 16.0 points, 5.5 rebounds
6-6 Sr. Theo Robeertson 14.4 points, 4.7 rebounds
6-8 Sr. Jamal Boykin 11.9 points, 6.6 rebounds
6-3 Soph. Jorge Gutierrez 5.4 points
7-3 Soph. Max Zhang 3.2 points
6-5 Jr. Markhur Sanders-Frison 3.2 points
The Bears average 77.9 points and give up 68.2 per game. They shoot 47.8% from the field and relinquinsh 43.3%. They shoot 37.7% from three on 6.6 made and give up 31.9% on 5.6 made per game. They out rebound their opponents by 3.5 a game and commit 12.1 turnovers, while forcing 13.0 a game.
Notes: The game is scheduled for 5:15 on CBS. It is unclear whether Omondi Amoke the 6-7 sophomore forward suspended for the Louisville game will be available on Sunday.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Duke's confident mascot wore a piece of tape across his forehead that read: "Played In, Blown Out."
The Blue Devils didn't disappoint.
Avoiding the upset bug that has taken down several favorites in the NCAA tournament, the top-seeded Atlantic Coast Conference champions opened play in the South Regional with a dominating 73-44 victory Friday night over No. 16 seed Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
"That really didn't cross our minds, that happening to us, the 1 vs. 16," Duke's Jon Scheyer said.
"This was a springboard for us. We were limiting them to one shot and rebounding well," fellow senior Lance Thomas added. "If we continue doing that we'll beat anybody in the tournament."
Kyle Singler had 22 points and 10 rebounds for Duke, which never trailed. Scheyer scored 13 and Thomas 12. Nolan Smith added 10 points on a subpar shooting night (3 for 10) for the junior guard.
• Kyle Singler led all scorers with 22 points and Duke never trailed.
• Jon Scheyer added 13 points and moved into the top 10 in school history in points.
• With the win, Duke has 30 wins in a season for the 11th time in school history.
• The 44 points are the third fewest ever allowed by the Blue Devils in the NCAA tournament.
-- ESPN Stats & Information
The victory gave coach Mike Krzyzewski his 11th 30-win season in three decades at Duke, which has made 10 trips to the Final Four under him, though none since 2006.
The Blue Devils (30-5) played like a team intent on changing that, pressing their overmatched opponents to start the game, building a 39-20 halftime lead and never giving Arkansas-Pine Bluff (18-16) a sense that the SWAC champions might have a chance to win.
"It's nice to have," Krzyzewski said of another 30-win season, though he wasn't sure how many the Blue Devils have under him.
Told it's 11, he replied: "That's a lot of wins. ... The best thing is to have 31 and move on," to the round of 16, which is what a victory Sunday would do.
Arkansas-Pine Bluff, appearing in the NCAAs for the first time, beat Winthrop 61-44 in the tournament opener Tuesday and are led by coach George Ivory, who played on a heavy underdog that gave powerful Duke a scare in the opening round 24 years ago.
But this group of Blue Devils has learned they can't take anything for granted in March.
Duke survived a first-round scare against Belmont two years ago, and Krzyzewski and his players were determined to set the tone for what it hopes will be a strong run with a sharp performance.
"I thought we handled both halfs really well," Krzyzewski said. "It wasn't a sloppy game."
Pine Bluff shot 32 percent and turned the ball over 16 times. Tavaris Washington led the Golden Lions with nine points. They turned in a respectable defensive performance, but struggled to score against Duke's bigger, more physical frontcourt.
"I think they got a little nervous," said Ivory, whose team had won 18 of 22 going into the game. "Sometimes you play not to lose and we were trying to not make mistakes."
The Golden Lions spent November and December crisscrossing the country, playing -- and losing -- their first 11 games on the road against steep competition that included Kansas State, Missouri, Michigan, Oklahoma State, Arizona State, Colorado, UTEP, Georgia Tech and Oregon.
Instead of damaging the Golden Lions' confidence, the tough competition more than prepared Ivory's team for the SWAC and the "play-in game" against Winthrop that earned them a date with Duke.
As a player, Ivory was part of a Mississippi Valley State team that was seeded 16th and gave top-seeded Duke all it could handle in the opening round in 1986 -- the year Krzyzewski led the Blue Devils to the Final Four for the first time.
"I think this is going to help our program," Ivory said. "We accomplished some things that we've never done. ... We've got to keep working and get a little better."
The Arkansas Pine Bluff Golden Lions lost their first 11 games of the season, but the the senior laden team turned it around and have won 13 of their last 14 including a 61-44 win over Winthrop in the NCAA play in game on Tuesday night in Dayton. They are 18-15 and winners of SWAC conference.
Coach George Ivory is in his second year in Pine Bluff has an experienced team that boasts 7 seniors in their top 8 players.
Here is the starting line up and the key reserves.
6-5 Sr. Tavarais Washington 9.5 points, 4.9 rebounds
6-7 Sr. Tyree Glass 8.2 points
6-6 Sr. George Davis 5.0 points, 4.3 rebounds
5-10 Sr. Allen Smith 4.8 points
The Golden Lions average 64.3 points and give up 64.1. The shoot 41.% from the field and relinquish 40.3%. they shoot 30.6$ from three on 4.2 made and give up 31.8% on 5.0 made per game. They out rebound their opponents by 6.6 and commit 16.8 turnovers per game, while forcing 13.9.
Notes: The game is scheduled for 7:25pm and will be televised on CBS.
GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP)—Kyle Singler scored 20 points and Jon Scheyer hit a critical 3-pointer with 18 seconds left to help No. 4 Duke beat Georgia Tech 65-61 in Sunday’s Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championship game.
Scheyer finished with 16 points for the top-seeded Blue Devils (29-5), who let an 11-point lead with 6 minutes left slip all the way to one before Scheyer’s big shot. Nolan Smith also had 16 points to help Duke earn a league-record 18th tournament title, breaking a tie with rival North Carolina.
In a tournament filled with upsets, it took a gritty effort from Duke’s high-scoring “Big Three” to hold off a determined comeback from the seventh-seeded Yellow Jackets (22-12), who were trying to become the first team in tournament history to win four games in four days.
Duke has won nine of the past 12 ACC tournaments and was in prime position to grab a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
Freshman Derrick Favors had 22 points and 11 rebounds to lead the Yellow Jackets, who were trying to become the lowest-seeded team to win the tournament. Georgia Tech fell behind 8-0 and trailed 52-41 after Scheyer’s 3-pointer with 6:19 to play. But the Yellow Jackets ran off nine straight points to get within 60-59 on Favors’ dunk with 47.9 seconds left.
But Scheyer—who was just 1 of 8 from behind the arc to that point—lost Glen Rice Jr. around a screen and swished a 3 from the right side to push the lead back to four points. Then, after a driving basket from Iman Shumpert, Singler knocked down two free throws with 9 seconds left to make it a two-possession game and essentially seal the victory.
It was fitting that Duke punctuated the game at the free throw line. The Blue Devils made 24 of 28 free throws, including 21 of 23 in the second half to offset a 6-of-22 (27 percent) shooting performance after the break and keep the Yellow Jackets in catch-up mode almost all game.
Singler was named MVP despite shooting 3 of 15 from the field, though he did make 14 of 16 free throws—the 14 were a championship-game record—and finished with six rebounds. He had a nasty red scratch about 4 inches long on the back of his right shoulder, the result of diving over a courtside table for a loose ball, almost landing on Dick Vitale and ending up on the floor between press-row tables late in the first half.
When the horn sounded, Singler leapt into the arms of Smith for a hug near the sideline, than ran to hug senior Brian Zoubek as the Blue Devils began their oncourt celebration.
In many ways, it had to be a relief considering everything that had gone on in Greensboro this week.
The Blue Devils were the only one of the top six seeds to make it to the semifinals in a tournament that had seen a bevy of ugly, low-scoring games in a Greensboro Coliseum that had numerous rows of empty green seats in the upper level from tipoff of Thursday’s games.
By Sunday’s final, Duke fans had gobbled up plenty of tickets from fans whose schools had lost, putting plenty of royal blue in the seats and creating a homecourt advantage for a team playing about an hour’s drive west of its Durham campus to make Georgia Tech’s job even tougher.
The Yellow Jackets hadn’t won the tournament in 17 years, when they capped a similar run as a No. 6 seed under Bobby Cremins by upending top-seeded and eventual national champion North Carolina in the final. They had reached the finals only twice since, the last time a loss to the Blue Devils five years ago.
Cremins, now the coach at College of Charleston, sat behind the Georgia Tech bench for this one. But the Yellow Jackets couldn’t match their ’93 run, falling behind early and failing to get closer than four points until that frantic final minute.
At least Georgia Tech probably took care of its shaky NCAA tournament prospects. It entered Greensboro on the bubble after losing five of seven to close the regular season.
GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP)—The momentum was on the opposing sideline after a 3-pointer just before the halftime horn. Duke’s frustrated Hall of Fame coach had already been whistled for a technical foul. And the fourth-ranked Blue Devils were flirting with joining the long list of upset victims at the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament.
It’s a good thing Kyle Singler is playing his best basketball of the season.
Singler scored 27 points to help the Blue Devils push ahead in the second half to beat Miami 77-74 in Saturday’s semifinals, sending them back to the championship game for the 11th time in 13 years.
Jon Scheyer added 16 points, including eight in the go-ahead 15-0 run early in the second half that restored some sense of order in this upset-filled week in Greensboro. The top-seeded Blue Devils (28-5) trailed by three at halftime against the league’s last-place team before rallying to reach Sunday’s final, where they will defend their title against seventh-seeded Georgia Tech.
“We have been there, but if anything that just helps us knowing how tough it is,” Scheyer said. “We’re fortunate to get through these tough games and we know whoever we play, it’s going to be a battle and we need to be ready.”
Duke, the only one of the top six seeds to reach the semifinals, has won eight of the past 11 tournaments and is chasing a league-record 18th title. But while the Blue Devils have avoided an upset loss, they were tied at halftime with ninth-seeded Virginia in Friday’s quarterfinals, then found themselves trailing 35-32 against the 12th-seeded Hurricanes (20-13).
“We really haven’t had a good first half in this tournament,” Singler said. “It is frustrating. But I think the sign of a good team is to bounce back in the second half and find a way to win.”
On this afternoon, that meant riding Singler’s second big tournament performance. After tallying 18 points and 11 rebounds against the Cavaliers, he had eight rebounds, six assists and made five 3-pointers in 31 minutes against Miami. That included Duke’s first eight points of the second half.
“Kyle was magnificent in the second half,” coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “We started driving the zone in the second half. Kyle really did that. I know he got some 3s. But there was that sense of purpose, like attacking the zone. We were playing against the zone in the first half. In the second half, I thought we attacked it, and it was personified by Kyle.”
Freshman Durand Scott had 21 points for the Hurricanes, who put up plenty of fight but couldn’t follow their upsets of Wake Forest and Virginia Tech with a much bigger one. In the ACC semifinals for the first time in its history, Miami used a 17-2 run to erase a 12-point deficit and take the halftime lead on Malcolm Grant’s long 3-pointer with 5 seconds left.
But after Singler’s quick second-half flurry, Scheyer—who had just three points on 1-for-5 shooting to that point—knocked down a 3-pointer from the right corner to start the game-changing 15-0 run that finally gave Duke a 58-42 lead with 11:52 left. That lead held up, though pesky Miami proved difficult to put away.
“I thought in the first half, we played just about as well as we could play after we were able to absorb their pressure,” Miami coach Frank Haith said. “That one stretch there, the game got away from us a little bit, and that was the difference in the game.”
The Hurricanes got within five points five separate times in the last 90 seconds only to see the Blue Devils respond with either a basket or free throws. DeQuan Jones hit a desperation 3-pointer on Miami’s last possession with 2.4 seconds left, but the Hurricanes didn’t try to foul and the clock expired.
“We all came together and fought back, and we tried to bring it as close as possible,” Scott said. “But it just didn’t work out our way.”
Nolan Smith, the other member of Duke’s high-scoring “Big Three,” finished with 12 points, including a jumper with the shot clock winding down to give Duke a 70-63 lead with about a minute left.
As for Krzyzewski’s technical foul late in the first half, he had been arguing with the officials for a few minutes before the whistle. Moments later, he ripped off his gray suit coat, tossed it on the bench and spent the rest of the game coaching without it.
“I don’t call the technical on me, so I don’t know why the technical was called on me,” Krzyzewski quipped. “To ask me why the technical was called on me means I can read someone’s mind, and I can’t do that.”
