Dereck Lively’s basket off an offensive rebound with 1:45 to play broke a tie and Duke’s defense did the rest in a 63-57 victory against visiting North Carolina on Saturday night in Durham, N.C., in the teams’ first meeting since last spring’s Final Four. BOX SCORE (PDF)
Jeremy Roach scored 20 points, Kyle Filipowski had 14 points and Tyrese Proctor provided 11 points for Duke (17-6, 8-4 Atlantic Coast Conference), which has won three games in a row.
“I thought it was a really physical game. They’re really good, obviously. You know, Dereck Lively just changed the game. His rim protection. I’m so proud,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said after the game.
Duke got a defensive stop after going ahead 59-57, then benefitted from another offensive rebound for an extra possession.
Roach scored on a drive to push the edge to 61-57 with 27 seconds remaining. Roach sealed it with two free throws.
“Jeremy [Roach], the whole game, was in control. Big buckets at key times. Tyrese [Proctor], his offense but also his defense,” added Scheyer.
“And then Flip [Kyle Filipowski] might have had one of the big time plays of getting the loose ball to get us an extra possession down the stretch there.
Pete Nance’s only basket of the game tied the score for North Carolina with 3:58 left, but the Tar Heels didn’t score again. Read more: AP Top 25 Results: No. 21 Indiana shocks No. 1 Purdue!
Armando Bacot scored 14 points and Leaky Black had 13 points, including three of the Tar Heels’ seven 3-point baskets.
Caleb Love added 12 points and RJ Davis had 11 points for North Carolina (15-8, 7-5), which lost at home to Pittsburgh on Wednesday. Bacot and Black each had 10 rebounds.
“This is basketball. This is life,” said North Carolina coach Hubert Davis. “Let’s go back to work tomorrow. Let’s get back to work. Let’s work hard.
“Let’s do it with energy, effort, passion, enthusiasm. Let’s go show up on Monday. Let’s work hard: energy, effort, passion, enthusiasm, togetherness, closeness, hunger and thirst.
“Let’s play on Tuesday against a great, unbelievable Wake Forest team.”
It marked the beginning of a new era for this storied rivalry as Scheyer was in charge of the Blue Devils. Hubert Davis is in his second year as head coach at North Carolina, which won two of three meetings last season.
“It was a little personal for me, with what happened last year, obviously,” Roach said. “I just wanted to come out here and do everything I can to get this win. It kind of eases [the pain of last year] a little bit.
“Obviously, we’ve still got more work to do. We play them again, so we can’t just think about what we did last time. We’ve got to go out there and do it again.”
Those weren’t ordinary results, given the first of those wins came in Mike Krzyzewski’s final game in Cameron Indoor Stadium as Duke’s coach.
The next matchup sent Krzyzewski into retirement when the Tar Heels won the Final Four semifinal clash.
Yet Saturday night’s game marked just the third time in the last 159 meetings that neither team was in the Top 25.
Duke blocked a season-high 11 shots, with Lively, who had 14 rebounds, delivering eight of those rejections. Both teams shot below 40 percent from the field.
Duke led 33-32 at halftime courtesy of a late 8-0 run as the Tar Heels went more than four minutes without scoring during one span. Bacot had 10 points and Roach had 10 at the break.
Each team won 50 times in the previous 100 most-recent meetings between the teams.
–Field Level Media
