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No. 7 Virginia Falls To No. 1 Duke, 94-81
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Jan 27, 2002
Box Score?|?Quotes | Video Highlights and Postgame Comments
By DAVID DROSCHAK
AP Sports Writer
DURHAM, N.C. – Top-ranked Duke would like to bottle the second half ofits last three games at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Jason Williams scored 27 points, Carlos Boozer added 25 and Duke shot 68percent over the final 20 minutes Sunday night in racing past No. 7 Virginia94-81.
Duke outscored No. 3 Maryland 51-29 in the second half at home on Jan. 17,then beat No. 21 Wake Forest by 11 over the final 20 minutes last weekend.Virginia was added to the list of recent second-half victims as Duke scored 52points in the second stanza Sunday night.
“For us to do that says a lot about our conditioning and our physical stateand mental toughness,” forward Mike Dunleavy said. “Thirty, 35 minutesthrough a game we can still concentrate and put teams away.”
The Blue Devils were 30-for-46 from the foul line as Virginia was called for31 fouls.
“We started attacking in the full court,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski saidof his team’s 19-for-28 shooting in the final 20 minutes. “And we had flurriesstarted from our defense.”
The Blue Devils (18-1, 6-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) won their sixthstraight – all by double digits – since losing by one point to Florida State onJan. 6.
Duke kept pace with Maryland atop the ACC standings nearing the halfwaypoint of the league season, while the Cavaliers (14-3, 4-3) fell into afourth-place tie with Wake Forest. North Carolina State is third at 5-2.
Williams notched his 11th 20-point game of the season, while Boozer has sixin a row as the Blue Devils improved to 18-4 in their last 22 matchups with TopTen teams and snapped Virginia’s five-game winning streak.
The Cavaliers battled foul trouble all night and was led by Roger MasonJr.’s 15 points.
“We were in tremendously deep foul trouble,” Virginia coach Pete Gillensaid. “We went zone once and they scored in about 1.2 seconds. So I said,`Well, that’s it for the zone.”‘
The score was tied 42-42 at halftime, but Duke took control in the openingfive minutes of the second half.
The Blue Devils went 7-of-9 from the field as Boozer had a fastbreak layupand a slam, while Dahntay Jones scored on two follow shots. A 3-pointer byChris Duhon – his first points of the game – gave Duke its first double-digitlead, 59-48 with 15:13 left.
Virginia was within nine points three minutes later despite missing eightstraight shots at one point. But Boozer had two dunks and a follow shot andWilliams a fastbreak layup to run the score to 77-59 as the nation’s topscoring team inched closer to yet another 20-win season under Krzyzewski.
“We got a little flustered and took some bad shots in the second half,”Gillen said. “Our defense also broke down. Part of it was a lack ofconcentration, part of it was foul trouble and part of it was they executedwell.”
Virginia had four frontcourt players with three fouls each after 20 minutes,but the Cavaliers were able to forge the halftime tie with dominating insideplay.
Duke made its first eight shots and went up 42-13 at Boston College onThursday night, but this time it didn’t come as easily against a team it blewout by 42 in Cameron a year ago.
The Blue Devils went up by seven 6:41 before the half. However, theCavaliers went on an 8-0 run to keep it close without Travis Watson, the ACCleader in double-doubles who sat out the final 11:11 with three fouls.
Virginia got a huge lift from freshman Jason Clark, who hit all five of hisfirst-half shots and had a season-high 11 points over the final 6:56 of theperiod.
“For them, the guys coming off the bench were scoring more. I didn’t feelgood,” Krzyzewski said.
Duke did go 18-for-23 from the foul line, but shot 35.7 percent, made onlyfour 3-pointers and turned it over nine times as Virginia had hope it would winin Cameron for the first time since 1995.
“Virginia made us look bad in the first half,” Krzyzewski said. “What aspark they got from their bench. They’re good.”
But Watson got his fourth foul early in the second half and Clark fouled outwith 16:14 left after picking up two in a span of 18 seconds.
“We drove the ball more than we shot 3s,” Krzyzewski said when asked aboutVirginia’s foul situation. “In a transition game we’ve got four kids who candrive.”