NEW YORK — By late Saturday night, Duke may very well be lugging the championship trophy around the Barclays Center and feeling good about things again. Moods and fortunes can change that quickly in the ACC tournament.
The only emotion the Blue Devils could enjoy on Thursday afternoon was relief, and that only narrowly.
A win is a win is a win, but letting a six-player Syracuse team missing its best player hang around for 38 minutes is not exactly the behavior of a national championship contender, especially one whose character was already being called into question.
And even if Duke did manage to lock things down in the final two minute for an 88-79 win, the Blue Devils continue to tempt fate as they stare into the abyss.
“Obviously versus North Carolina, we got that feeling of defeat, knowing there’s not a second chance to play in Cameron again,” Duke forward Mark Williams said. “So I think for me personally, that’s what was going through my mind. We lose that game, we’re done.”
If the debacle in Durham was “unacceptable,” to borrow a phrase, falling prey to one of the epic upsets in ACC tournament history would somehow have been worse. Letting it come even this close is not a great sign for a Duke team that had everything to prove — to itself, to everyone — after losing to UNC five days earlier in Krzyzewski’s final home game, and instead showed again what may be its fatal flaw.
It’s hard to say at this point whether this Duke team struggles to handle prosperity or adversity, but it’s increasingly clear that the blown second-half leads are not the product of bad luck or inexperience but the manifestation of a very basic element of this team’s DNA: The too-frequent inability to impose its will and superior talent when it matters.
Krzyzewski said afterward that he and assistant coach Chris Carrawell and AJ Griffin had all been stricken with food poisoning, which certainly couldn’t have helped, but that wasn’t all.
“We’re not playing very good defense right now,” Krzyzewski said. “We did not against North Carolina. We did not in this game. We missed a lot of assignment and we fouled a lot of 3-point shooters. You just can’t do that.”
Duke’s inability to put away Syracuse — the Orange without their best player, the suspended Buddy Boeheim — until the very end looked all too much like the final minutes of the North Carolina game, minus the scores of Duke legends looking increasingly uneasy behind the bench. Up 24-13, the Blue Devils let Syracuse off the hook with bad shots and worse defense, giving the Orange motive and opportunity.
Joe Girard III nailed his second chance at a first-half buzzer-beater, thanks to a clock error, and the Orange led by as many as seven in the second half before Duke finally got its act together, and even that was the narrowest of escapes.
Give Syracuse credit for taking a swing — Girard and Jimmy Boeheim were spectacular, showing all the gumption Duke occasionally lacks, and the Orange played with “great verve,” to use a Krzyzewskism often applied to his own team — but without the better Boeheim brother, on talent alone this should have been a walkover, a controlled scrimmage.
There’s still a little bit of time for Duke to figure this out — the Blue Devils didn’t look like they had any issues against Kentucky or Gonzaga, so many eons ago — but the absence of a true point guard, Paolo Banchero’s propensity for fading late in games, defensive lassitude and the failure of a true alpha leader to emerge over the course of the season have all combined to put Duke in a position of weakness completely disproportionate to its collective talent.
Maybe Thursday’s conclusion turns out to be a turning point that way, with Wendell Moore nailing two big free throws, Banchero finishing in traffic, Jeremy Roach applying the finish with a corner 3, but it’s not going to get any easier from here.
“Going into next week, being in those situations will really help us a lot,” Krzyzewski said, and time will tell whether that’s wishful thinking or not.
The Blue Devils may have escaped this one, against a team that should never have had a chance, but should Miami get past Boston College, the Hurricanes won’t be intimidated either. Not after beating Duke in Durham. Certainly not after watching this.
The clock’s running out on Duke to live up to all the expectations placed upon it this season, internally and externally. Thursday was a win, Duke moved on, but it was anything but victorious.
