DURHAM, N.C. — Thanks to a quirk of the schedule and the somewhat unexpected state of the ACC, Duke got a chance to climb the ladder, playing three of the four teams above it in the standings in an 11-day span, starting with Pittsburgh.
Thanks to the best game of Kyle Filipowski’s short Duke career and the sudden emergence of Dereck Lively II as an offensive threat, the Blue Devils forged a mighty second-half comeback Wednesday to ascend a rung and move alongside the surprising Panthers at 4-2 in the conference on with a 77-69 win.
Duke may not have expected to be looking up at Pitt in the standings at this point in the season, but there’s certainly no argument the way Duke has played at times. And for much of Wednesday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium, it looked like the Blue Devils would still be looking up at the Panthers.
But Filipowski carried Duke through the dark times with a season-high 28 points and Lively’s newfound confidence in the post — as a scorer, passer and even perimeter defender — proved decisive during a 19-2 second-half run that wiped out the lead Pittsburgh had held for almost the entire game. The Blue Devils dominated the offensive glass, rebounding more of their misses (24) than Pittsburgh did (19).
“People are saying we’re young, inexperienced, we don’t have that chemistry,” Filipowski said. “Tonight, we’ve really taken that personally and we’re just doing what we should be.”
Even with Jeremy Roach’s right foot still in a walking boot, the Blue Devils still dug deep enough to forge a comeback against a Pitt team that seemed intent on proving that there are no bad shots as long as you make them, with defensive contributions from Jaylen Blakes and a quietly effective game from Tyrese Proctor.
And so this pivotal sequence in the schedule — Clemson is next, followed by Miami — started with a win that seemed to reinforce all of Duke’s macro issues: an inability to defend Pittsburgh’s iso looks out of a simple ball screen at one end, the inability of anyone to create their own shot or consistently make any at the other, before the Blue Devils seemed to solve all of their persistent problems in the second half by turning their offensive rebounds into points and switching everything on Pitt’s ball screens.
“What’s exciting about this is we had some things that didn’t go our way,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “They hit some tough shots. We didn’t. Obviously, we were careless with the ball in that first half. And so to come out of this during a game — N.C. State, that run, we weren’t get out of it. Earlier in the year, Kansas we did. That was probably another game we did, we just couldn’t close.
“To know you can do this, down 11? We got back pretty quick in the game and I thought we just showed a tremendous amount of heart and learned a lot about ourselves tonight.”
Proctor added 14 points and five assists with no turnovers for Duke, a critical contribution with Roach out indefinitely as he tries to let a toe injury heal. Scheyer said Roach will almost certainly miss Saturday’s equally critical game at Clemson, barring something entirely unexpected.
“We just trust in each other,” Proctor said. “Obviously Jeremy being out hurts us a lot. We can’t wait until he comes back. But you know, he’s out right now and we’ve got to move on.”
It was an improbable turnaround under the circumstances, not only Wednesday but for Duke this month, coming off the blowout loss at N.C. State and the by-their-fingernails escape at Boston College. And it energized Cameron in a way it hasn’t often been this season, and certainly wasn’t as Pitt extended its lead late in the first half and into the second.
“This building’s never out of it,” Pitt coach Jeff Capel said. “You anticipate a run is coming at some point. They made a run — the crowd was in it all game, terrific crowd, but when they got going, I think those guys really fed off it, too.”
But the Blue Devils were able to maintain their lead down the stretch, giving Scheyer the win over Capel in a battle between the once-presumptive heir to Mike Krzyzewski and the eventual chosen one.
It’s hard to imagine Pitt’s players cared about Cameron palace drama any more than they care about Harry and Meghan, but this was nevertheless Capel’s first visit back to Duke since Scheyer was elevated to coach-in-waiting, becoming the successor to Krzyzewski that Capel was, in the wake of Duke’s national title in 2015, thought almost certain to be.
Capel won several games at Cameron subbing for Krzyzewski, but he’s still looking for his first on the opposite bench. And Pittsburgh, which started the day above Duke in the standings, ended up alongside the Blue Devils, who have a chance to rise further, and quickly.
