Duke vs Virginia Tech Basketball Recap

Duke 67, Virginia Tech 55

The Virginia Tech Hokies challenged the Duke Blue Devils for 30 minutes on Sunday night in Durham, N.C. However, college basketball is still a 40-minute proposition, and in the final 10 minutes of regulation, one of the ACC's two standard-bearers produced a typical response.

With 9:54 left in the second half of this defining ACC duel, Coach Seth Greenberg's boys from Blacksburg, Va., owned a 45-44 lead inside Cameron Indoor Stadium, by far the toughest road venue in the conference. With a strong finishing kick, Virginia Tech could have tied Maryland for second place in the league and fully locked up an NCAA Tournament berth.

Instead, the home team kicked back and trounced Tech when winning time arrived. While the Hokies are still in really good shape as far as the Big Dance is concerned, the boys in orange and maroon have to be lamenting their inability to dump Duke.

With this win, Blue Devil coach Mike Krzyzewski piloted his team to a one-and-a-half-game lead over Maryland in the ACC. With that having been said, however, it's not as though Duke exhibited its finest form in prime time. The leader in the conference missed stacks of jumpers and played a perimeter-based game for much of the night. There was a reason Duke was sitting on just 44 points after unsuccessfully navigating the first 75 percent of this contest. Virginia Tech's defense choked off dribble penetration and earned a place at the ACC's big-boy table.

But in terms of winning conference championships - another matter altogether - the ACC starts with North Carolina, and it ends with Duke. After a year in which the Tar Heels reigned supreme on Tobacco Road, the Dukies are just about to hang their own league banner at Cameron. This is partly because the home team became stronger near the rim and on the glass in the late going, but it's also because Virginia Tech couldn't finish fast breaks of either a primary or secondary nature.

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The element of this encounter that will linger with Greenberg and the rest of the Virginia Tech staff is that the Hokies had a number of transition opportunities they didn't convert. Sometimes, Tech got a four-on-two or a three-on-one, only to settle for a long three following an ill-advised kick-out to the perimeter. This regular inclination to lean on jumpers instead of driving all the way to the basket prevented the visitors from racking up several extra scores, and although the final margin shows that Duke won by 12, the Devils led by only six with just under a minute to play (61-55). If the Hokies had displayed better shot selection in this game, particularly on fast breaks, they would have scored in the mid-60s and forced Duke to be a little bit better at the offensive end. Instead, Coach K's club was able to win despite hitting only 29 percent of its field goal attempts (18 of 62).

That's not a misprint: Duke hit only 29 percent of its shots at Cameron, the familiar building where Blue Devil jumpers normally tickle the twine. Virginia Tech played hard, but the Hokies didn't play smart, and that's why their strong defense went for naught in the Carolinas.

Duke is once again headed for a regular-season ACC title. The Blue Devils can smell more hardware precisely because they were able to win when their shots weren't falling and their customary sharpness wasn't in evidence. Virginia Tech's having a great season, but if the Hokies want to win this league in the future, a fair portion of wisdom will become an absolute necessity. Duke students are smart enough to punish opponents for making bad decisions, after all.

By: Matt Zemek
ACC-Fans Staff Writer