No. 1 Duke comes from behind to top Jackets

The Jackets played perhaps the best half of basketball in two years, but another second-half collapse plagued Tech. The No. 1 Duke Blue Devils overcame a five-point halftime deficit to win 73-66 on Wednesday.

“We played well for about 35 minutes and showed a lot of immaturity in the last five,” Head Coach Paul Hewitt said. “We committed some pretty bad fouls. I hate to say we did it to ourselves, but we did. They were bad, silly, unintelligent fouls.”

The Blue Devils were able to absorb the 70.8 percent shooting by the Jackets in the first half to avoid the upset and pick up the win at Alexander Memorial Coliseum.

“It’s not about playing well, it’s about winning the game,” Hewitt said.

The Jackets fell to 10-15, 3-11 in the ACC. Tech is 8-33 all time against teams ranked No. 1, and the Jackets have still not won a home game against Duke since the 1995-96 team that featured Stephon Marbury and Matt Harpring under the helm of Bobby Cremins.

On a night that saw J.J. Reddick attempt to break the ACC career scoring mark, Reddick missed 15 of his first 17 shots. The final miss in that span led to a rebound and put-back by Josh McRoberts that gave Duke the lead with 9:42 left in the game. The Blue Devils hadn’t had the lead since the opening minute of the game when they led 2-0.

Reddick then caught fire and scored the next seven points of the game that capped a 15-0 run and took the wind out of Tech’s sails. Reddick made just one bucket the rest of the way but still scored 22 points on the game, propelled by 91.67 percent free-throw shooting. Nine of his last 11 points came from the charity stripe, and he fell nine points short of breaking three records in three games.

“When you have a player of Reddick’s caliber that is having an off night, you can’t bail him out by putting him at the line,” Hewitt said.

Sheldon Williams scored 26 points and had 11 boards to make up for the early offensive performances of scoreless Sean Dockery and Reddick.

Second half collapses have become a trend for the Jackets as a team. Since the Centenary game on January 10, Tech’s lone victory came against N.C. State. Tech has blown six halftime leads in the 12-game span.

“It’s interesting,” Hewitt said. “I’ve got to be careful what I tell my teams because the first day of practice. I told them, ‘This team is talented. I know you can play with anybody in the country for 20 or 30 minutes. But do you have the mental and physical toughness to win the game down the stretch?’”

Jeremis Smith led on offense, scoring 18 points after shooting 8-14 from the field to go along with 12 rebounds. Zam Fredrick continued his strong play scoring 13 points with nine assists. Ra’Sean Dickey battled foul trouble in the second half, but scored 14 as well.

After guarding Reddick for 16 minutes of the first half, Anthony Morrow battled foul trouble, a thigh bruise and cramps in the second half. Morrow scored all four of his points in the first half, and was attributed with playing one minute and picking up three fouls in the second half. This was the first game of the season that Morrow did not hit a three-point shot.

West went down with cramps with five minutes to play in the game, and the team suffered a major brain cramp after jumping out to a 47-39 lead early in the second half.

The Jackets made an 8-2 run in the first minute and a half after intermission, which made the box score look more respectable than it was. The Jackets scored a total of 11 points between 18:30 and 0:46 remaining in the second half.

Tech led by as many as eight and led 39-34 at the conclusion of the first half. Tech shot 17 of 24 in the first half, but only shot 36 percent in the second.

The Jackets will return to action on Saturday at 1 p.m. for the final home game of the year against Wake Forest.

When asked how to beat the Demon Deacons on senior day, Smith mentioned two key players. “Stop Justin Gray, stop Eric Williams and that’s pretty much all,” he said.