With the Duke decibels and angst rising Wednesday night, Nolan Smith scrunched his face and scowled.
He was ready for work. He went to work.
At the end of his shift, the Blue Devils beat North Carolina 79-73 and established a foothold on first place in the ACC. Smith punctuated the foul-and-shoot final minutes by going long on a full-court inbound play, fielding the pass and dunking.
The resounding basket turned Cameron Indoor Stadium into a human roar, and it turned another remarkable page in Smith's senior yearbook. In the 130th game of his career, Smith scored more points than ever, 34. He hit 13 of 23 shots and committed only two turnovers in 37 furious minutes, an outburst he said he would remember forever.
Coach Roy Williams of UNC, his voice soft and low afterward, spoke firmly while praising Smith. "Nolan was a load driving to the basket and making plays," Williams said.
Smith's performance undoubtedly strengthened any claim as the ACC's finest player this season, but no single player could've won such a ferocious game.
The Blue Devils needed two scorers, and the conventional candidate, Kyle Singler, couldn't find the net.
Freshman Harrison Barnes, who chose Carolina over Duke at the end of a long recruiting battle, helped contain Singler, who went 3 for 17 from the floor and managed just 10 points.
Into the void stepped Seth Curry, the sophomore transfer from Liberty and the Curry family tree of perimeter marksmen. The Tar Heels couldn't squeeze the lane and push out on every shooter, and Curry found the gaps, often along the left baseline as Duke rapidly narrowed a 16-point deficit to nothing early in the second half.
Curry scored 18 of his 22 points in the second half, finishing with eight field goals in 15 attempts.
Some elements defied statistics. Carolina dominated the first half, with freshman point guard Kendall Marshall engineering the 94-foot offense. The Tar Heels stayed in constant transition, with galloping John Henson (14 points, 12 rebounds) and center Tyler Zeller (24 points, 13 rebounds) cleaning up the inside mess.
"They were just so fast in that first half," Coach Mike Krzyzewski of Duke said. "I thought they knocked us back. We were so scattered … I thought we were nuts in the first half."
Instead of screaming at halftime, down 43-29, Krzyzewski urged calm. "Just settle down," he told the Blue Devils. "Just settle down."
The Tar Heels hardly escaped the first half unscathed. Dexter Strickland, the wing guard who backs up Marshall at point since Larry Drew quit, bothered Smith some in the early minutes, forcing Smith to drive left under pressure.
Although Smith converted a couple of shots, he couldn't get clear openings until Strickland got into foul trouble. He committed a cheap foul reaching in near the top of the foul circle. Williams, standing about 20 feet away, winced at Strickland's second foul.
His third, charging on a fast break with 8:28 left in the half, altered Carolina's defensive plan. Marshall spent much of the second half guarding Smith, whose superior quickness created better chances.
Whatever the causes and effects, the Smith-Curry combination awoke the Duke offense, which also benefitted from offensive rebounds off missed free throws and a steady collection of loose balls.
The comeback added fuel to the Duke tank.
Williams said that Duke did a better job of attacking in the second half. "Those guys, they keep coming at you, coming at you, coming at you," Williams said, "and you've got to come back at them."
The Tar Heels tried, but they had too little time and had to deal with too much Smith.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement