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COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said he got everything he could have hoped for from his team Wednesday night, yet his Blue Devils still didn’t come away with what they wanted.
No. 4 Duke overcame a
14-point deficit and led much of the second half, but Maryland scored eight unanswered points in the final two minutes to break away from a tie and pull out a 79-72 victory at the Comcast Center.
The Blue Devils (25-5, 12-3 ACC) could have earned their first ACC regular season championship since 2006, but instead the No. 22 Terrapins (22-7, 12-3) tied them atop the standings heading into the final weekend.
“I’m proud of my guys. I thought we played winning basketball,” Krzyzewski said. “I thought what they did was good and what we did was good. There wasn’t any bad stuff.
“It was a heck of a game. Both teams played their hearts out.”
If Krzyzewski could have changed one thing, it would have been the eventual landing spot of many of Duke’s shots in the second half. The Blue Devils shot 33.3 percent in the second half, while Maryland made 48.1 percent. And those percentages tilted even more towards the Terps in the dramatic final minutes.
After Nolan Smith — who led Duke with 20 points — reeled off seven straight points to give Duke a 56-54 lead heading to the final eight minutes, the lead changed hands three times and the teams stood tied six times the rest of the way, neither managing more than an three-point lead until the final minute.
Maryland, however, closed with a flourish. Post player Jordan Williams (15 points, 11 re-
bounds) gave the Terrapins a 71-69 lead when he tipped a missed shot to himself and followed it in with 1:38 to play.
Then after Jon Scheyer
(19 points) and Smith missed 3-point attempts on Duke’s subsequent possession, Greivis Vasquez (20 points) capped his senior night by driving and then fading away for an indefensible one-handed fling from about 10 feet that made it 73-69 with 38.6 seconds left.
Two more empty possessions for Duke and two pair of free throws sealed it and sent many in the crowd of 17,950 spilling onto the floor at the final buzzer.
“You can’t do anything about that,” Scheyer said of the dagger from Vasquez, who scored 11 points over the final eight minutes. “It came down to a possession or two at the end.
“They made a couple of their shots, and we missed some shots. That’s how the game goes.”
The teams’ shots were falling at decidedly different rates early, when Maryland built a double-digit lead less than six minutes in and increased it to 14 points with six minutes left.
The Blue Devils, however, finished the half exactly the opposite of the way they started it — with each of their big three hitting — to nearly erase the entire deficit heading to the break.
After Sean Mosley, who matched senior Eric Hayes with nine first-half points, drained a 3-pointer for a 33-19 lead, Duke outscored Maryland 19-7 the rest of the half to pull within 40-38.
Miles Plumlee started it with a 3-pointer, on the first attempt of his career. That cut Duke’s deficit to 11, where it remained heading to the final three minutes. That’s when Kyle Singler (three-point play), Smith (3-pointer) and Scheyer (3-pointer) put up nine unanswered points to send it to the half.
Duke’s trio missed 8 of 9 shots at the start while Maryland ran out to a 21-8 lead, but the threesome hit 8 of 11 the rest of the half.
“There was a lot of emotion in this building, and they fed off of it early on and almost knocked us out of the building,” Krzyzewski said. “Our kids responded really well to where, in the last six minutes of the first half, I thought we actually took control of the game.
“We started out the second half the same way, and then we could not put the ball in the basket.”
Twelve seconds into the second half, Scheyer gave Duke its first lead of the night at 41-40 on another 3-pointer. The rest of the way, neither team led by more than five points until the final 30 seconds.
“It was high-level basketball — a level of 100,” Smith said. “They were making shots, we were making shots. We were going back and forth. They played a great game, and we feel like we played a great game.
“The outcome just wasn’t what we wanted. Congrats to them.”
NOTES — If Duke and Maryland both win or both lose their regular-season finales over the weekend, Duke would win any possible tiebreaker and claim the No. 1 seed in next week’s ACC Tournament. … Duke senior Brian Zoubek headed to the locker room late in the first half with a dislocated finger on his left hand. He returned before halftime and finished with four points and 13 rebounds.
