No. 17 Duke decimates No. 18 Pitt late to win

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The Panthers took an early lead Monday night, outplaying the Blue Devils in Duke’s first visit to the Petersen Events Center in team history.

But in the game’s final nine minutes, No. 17 Duke outplayed No. 18 Pitt to defeat the Panthers 80-65 in a game Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski, college basketball’s winningest coach, called “hard-fought.”

Duke (17-4, 6-2 ACC) outscored Pitt 28-14 after the Blue Devils clung to a 52-51 lead with 9:41 left in the game. The run began with a 3-pointer from Quinn Cook out of a timeout, then it continued with multiple threes made by Andre Dawkins, whom Krzyzewski called the “difference” in Duke’s win.

“We got some looks for him, my players got looks for him then all of a sudden, boom — we had a double-digit lead,” Krzyzewski said.

Dawkins finished with 20 points off the bench and shot 6-of-7 from 3-point range to account for nearly half of his team’s 13 makes, the most an opponent has made against Pitt (18-3, 6-2 ACC) this season.

Jabari Parker led all scorers with 21 points next to his 11 rebounds. Amile Jefferson also posted a double-double with 14 points and 10 boards, while Rodney Hood chipped in with 13 points.

Freshman forward Michael Young, who guarded Parker for most of the game, chalked his team’s defensive inability up to “mental mistakes.”

“We were switching and didn’t switch, or simple things like hedging,” Young said. “They just got a lot of open shots. A lot of open shots lead to a lot of open makes.”

On the other side of the ball, the Blue Devils were able to stop Pitt from scoring after the two teams spent the first 30 minutes of Monday’s game trading basket after basket.

The adjustments made in a timeout helped, but the focus of Duke’s defense was on one player.

“We started switching a little bit more, and you just try to make sure [Lamar] Patterson doesn’t stick daggers in you,” Krzyzewski said. “He’s such a big-time player, so our defense of him throughout the game, but especially during that period, was critical.”

Patterson, a redshirt senior forward who was honored earlier in the day as the ACC co-Player of the Week for the most recent week, scored 14 points but shot just 4-of-14 from the field, because Hood’s length allowed him to deny the ball from Patterson in the halfcourt.

“We missed a couple shots in there, and they did a pretty good job denying the ball,” sophomore point guard James Robinson said. “They rebounded well, and that led to us having bad looks on offense.”

While Patterson couldn’t pull his team down the stretch, Dawkins stretched Duke’s lead to 15 points.

“[Dawkins] was hitting and that gets you going,” Patterson said. “Then we were leaving him open, which wasn’t smart.”

Because the Panthers couldn’t stop the Blue Devils’ devastating perimeter attack, Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon pinned the loss on his not having the defense adequately prepared.

Late in the game, Dixon also thought his team was unable to maintain the focus it had in the first half.

“We got impatient,” Dixon said. “Obviously we were up, then down by one or two.”

As the offense went away due to Duke’s defensive adjustments, so did Pitt’s chances of winning.

“Us being able to score, we were able to keep it somewhat close, but for the whole second half we didn’t play defense,” Robinson said. “Once we stopped trading buckets we didn’t get many stops.”

Even though Pitt stayed close for the game’s first 30 minutes, Dixon didn’t disillusion himself with the way his team defended a potent Duke offense all game long.

“Our defense wasn’t good enough to win and our rebounding wasn’t good enough to win,” Dixon said. “In the second half it just continued.”