Learning a lesson in Cameron

DURHAM, N.C. — With 14 minutes to go in Virginia’s game at Duke on Saturday, those who had crammed into every nook and cranny of college basketball’s official madhouse sensed a significant shift in momentum.

"You could see it and you could feel it," said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski.

The problem for visiting Virginia was that it couldn’t do anything about it.

For much of the first 26 minutes of the ACC battle, the Cavaliers dictated a more deliberate tempo as Duke’s barrage of 3-point shots continued to bang off the familiar rims at storied Cameron Indoor Stadium. The more the Blue Devils missed, the better, and the slower, Virginia played.

While the youthful Cavaliers — perhaps too young to realize that they were supposed to crack and melt into a puddle of goo right there in the ancient arena — continued to frustrate the nation’s No. 1-ranked team on its own floor, everyone knew that a storm was brewing.

The Devils didn’t disappoint the knowing. Coming off their first loss of the season at Florida State a few nights earlier, Duke played with the effects of a hangover of its 25-game winning streak vanishing before its very eyes. However, the inevitable Duke run was coming and everyone knew.

Duke went on a 16-2 run, highlighted by a thunderous Nolan Smith dunk that nearly blew the roof off the old joint and went on to score its 30th consecutive home win, 76-60.

Cameron has been an intimidating venue for most teams, particularly UVa, which hasn’t tasted victory there since an overtime win there in 1995. More often than not, the Cavaliers have become unglued much earlier than Saturday’s scrap.

Coach Tony Bennett, gaining his first experience at Duke as well as five of his freshmen, will chalk this one up as an ‘L,’" as in learning.

The Blue Devils (16-1, 3-1), overcame a 10-point deficit to win by 16 points and in the process scored 51 points (58.6 percent shooting) all in the second half when Virginia (10-7, 1-2) unraveled defensively. Still, while few gave the Cavaliers much chance of pulling off an upset, they at least made Duke sweat.

"They’ll be a tough out as they were today," Krzyzewski said of the Cavaliers.

Even with their top scorer and rebounder and inspirational leader, Mike Scott, out for the season and watching from the bench, Virginia made the Devils a little nervous. For Bennett, that’s a good thing. His young team, which has but two seniors (Mustapha Farrakhan and Will Sherrill), has now led at the half of all three of its ACC games against Virginia Tech, North Carolina and Duke.

In fact, UVa has held leads into the second half in all three contests, and only one of those when Scott was healthy.

"It was a great experience for us coming in here in a hostile environment against a great team and we’re going to learn from it," said freshman Joe Harris, whose 15 points matched Farrakhan’s totals to lead Virginia. "We’re going back to the drawing board to see what happened, what mistakes we made and what we did well and take that to Boston" (the Cavs play at Boston College on Wednesday).

What Harris & Co. will find is that when Duke turned up the defensive intensity, the Cavaliers didn’t answer the bell. They had hung in there with good shooting and solid defense for nearly 25 minutes but couldn’t withstand the pressure.

"We were in position and we fought," Bennett said. "We told them it was going to be a battle for your composure and when that went away, that’s when Duke separated quickly. When we got down we probably panicked a little bit."

That follows the modus operandi of the majority of Duke wins at Cameron where the Devils turn up the pressure and most visitors contribute to their implosion.

"It’s like the ultimate home court advantage," Harris said. "As soon as they got that little lead going, especially when Nolan Smith got that dunk, the place became deafening. It was like insane. From that point on, they got the momentum and went with it and it escalated from that point on."

That moment woke up the Cameron Crazies and sent the crown into a frenzy. Virginia found it difficult to bounce back.

"It was tough," freshman KT Harrell said in reference to coming back at that point. "We haven’t experienced anything like that before. We have to learn to keep our composure. It’s definitely a learning experience for us, for me, because we have a lot more ahead of us. We have to learn that it’s a game of runs and things like that are going to happen. People are going to get dunks and crowds are going to go crazy and we have to keep our heads and keep playing."

That’s what Duke’s players have learned, players like Smith and Kyle Singler and most recently, sophomore Andre Hawkins, a Virginia native that scored 14 points, including a pair of 3-point daggers that squelched any thoughts of a UVa 
comeback.

Still, Bennett has to be disappointed with the loss, but not disappointed in his team and his freshmen, who were wobbly at times but learned valuable lessons.

"I felt [the freshmen] played well today," Farrakhan said. "This was their first time at Cameron Indoor. It’s just a learning experience for them and they’ll get better from this experience."

As Bennett told his team in the locker room after the game, they were "right there" for most of the game against Carolina and again against Duke.

"We’ve got to find a way to last and maintain," Bennett said. "That’s where you can’t beat yourself."

It’s called growing up.