The “best of both worlds” isn’t supposed to be attainable unless you’re Hannah Montana… or Duke. The Blue Devils not only won the first football game at Wallace Wade Stadium last fall, but also secured Cameron Indoor Stadium from the Tigers.
It’s 2-0 Duke.
“I just know I’m proud of our team,” head coach John Scheyer said after the game.
The 12th-ranked Blue Devils welcome Clemson to Durham on Saturday afternoon. The Whiplash competition left its outcome up in the air until the very end. But Duke took the lead 72–71.
At 2:19 on the clock, Clemson had taken a four-point lead and Clemson center PJ Hall was singing along to a Miley Cyrus song at Cameron Indoor.
The next Duke points put all of Cameron Indoor on its feet, as Jared McCann pushed the ball away from the Tigers and converted a fast break layup.
Will this be enough?
With 19.2 seconds on the clock, Duke trailed by two points. Scheyer called timeout.
Senior guard Jeremy Roach inbounds the ball. Kyle Filipowski found it. He made a layup, tied the game, and then drove to the stripe for another one. He made it, but there were still 15 seconds left and Clemson had the ball.
Scheyer said of Filipowski, “Probably, he had the greatest play of the game.”
Clemson head coach Brad Brownell called his timeout. Hall drove, Filipowski fouled out – and fouled out. Hall stood on the line, while the stadium roared louder than ever, and made his first foul shot. He cracked his neck, took a breath and took another breath.
Seven seconds, and Tyrese Proctor slipped through the Tigers defense like a man on the most important mission of his life until Josh Beadle fouled him. He made his first free-throw and tied the score.
“I was just talking to myself, knowing I was going to make both of them,” Proctor said.
His second won the game.
“I’m the best free-throw shooter in the country,” he said.
“I just told him he got it,” Scheyer said. “And he said, ‘It’s cooked, Coach.'”
In the 11th minute of the match, the Cameron Crazies got a little louder and Duke (15-4, 6-2 in the ACC) got a little tougher. It took its first lead since the start of the game with a 3-point showing from McCain and Proctor. As the Tigers passed the ball around the court, the latter snatched it, sent it to the other side and then arranged an assist for McCann. Clemson then lost possession, so Proctor’s delivery downtown was the next change on the scoreboard.
He hit another trey three minutes later, and a third just seconds after that. Suddenly, Duke had a 29–20 lead over the Tigers (13–6, 3–5), and Brownell needed a timeout.
Duke’s biggest asset in maintaining that gap long term was probably Hall – or, really, Hall’s absence in ACC play. The 6-foot-10 native of South Carolina, who leads the Tigers in scoring, blocks and steals, was not himself Saturday afternoon. He missed shots, he missed rebounds and didn’t do much in the way of stops. Filipowski held Hall to just seven points in the first half and shot 2 of 6 from the field.
When Filipowski picked up his fourth foul midway through the second half, earning a seat on the bench, it left Hall alone with graduate center Ryan Young. Filipowski soon re-entered the game, but in his absence, Hall had, apparently, regained his rhythm. At that point he ultimately had 13 points out of 19 and was actively getting in Filipowski’s way.
That’s when a relatively comfortable Duke lead turned into a nail-biter. Clemson took the lead for the first time since midway through the first half. The lead changed four times in four minutes.
Proctor’s 18 points didn’t rival his career-high 24 points against Louisville, but he came in style. The Australian point guard went 5 of 10 from the field, 4 of 6 from the arc and 4 of 4 from the stripe. His first shot of the second half went in cleanly, even though he fell backwards on the hardwood after missing the shot. He played it all with grace.
“I’ve been really working on my shooting,” Proctor said. “I’m hitting a lot of shots and I think now they’re starting to fall.”
The only shooting wing that outperformed Proctor’s was McCain’s. The freshman phenom reached 21 points by the time the final buzzer sounded, nine of which came from beyond the arc.
“He knew we had to make a play…he just had to make it,” Scheyer said. “As a freshman he had two steals in a row. That’s special.”
Cameron Indoors was crazy from the beginning. It only took two and a half minutes for the referees to call a timeout to review a foul call on McCann. It stood, and Clemson took the momentum to hit back-to-back-to-back threes. Scheyer sent Captain Roach to investigate.
Despite being part of the warm-up, Roach did not start. Due to a serious injury, the senior missed most of the last three matches due to which he had to sit on the bench. It is the latest in a recent string of injury problems that have kept Duke’s key players – including Mitchell and Proctor – off the court.
As he waited for a break in play, Roach saw Mitchell hit a triple from the left corner. The 10-5 lead was quickly cut to double digits by Clemson thanks to Kansas City. The Kan., native hit his fourth downtown shot of the season.
While Proctor did his Steph Curry imitations, Mitchell’s tenacity was on full display. In the opening minutes, the Sunrise Christian product blocked a rogue shot from Beadle and then converted Sean Stewart’s rebound into a basket-drive for two points. When, after one possession, a foul blocked his shot, he performed well at the stripe on both occasions.
“It’s hard to figure out because you can’t really match the physicality that (Clemson) is going to play with. I thought we prepared pretty well the last few days,” Proctor said. “I thought we just came out and played that game. Everyone battled back, that was the main thing.”
Things got interesting again when Joseph Girard III scored three clean sweeps five minutes into the second half, closing the gap between Duke and Clemson to four points. Luckily for the Blue Devil faithful, McCain immediately responded – smiling broadly – with a triple of his own. But then Clemson’s Jack Clark also hit a three and the contest heated up once again. It remained that way until Proctor closed out the scoring in the final seconds.
The Blue Devils have a Monday trip to Blacksburg, Virginia to take on Virginia Tech, followed by a weekend date with rival North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Get The Chronicle delivered straight to your inbox
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Cancel any time.
, Game Features Editor
Sophie Levenson is a second-year Trinity student and sports features editor for The Chronicle’s 119th volume.
