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 on-court 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 tip-off 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 home-court 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.