North Carolina pulls away late and beats Duke 79-71

Posted On: March 8, 2009 By: Cliff Comments: (more)

Well, the Duke / North Carolina game sure did live up to the hype as both teams fared off on Sunday. The bad news for Duke is that they were on the loosing end of the game as they lost 79-71. It was the second time that the Tar Heels have defeated the Blue Devils this season. The two teams could meet up for a third time in the ACC Tournament this next weekend so we will see what happens there as Duke could have a shot at a little redemption.

The two teams battled back and forth pretty much the entire game and Duke was within two points late in the second half but a turnover and two made shots by Carolina quickly put the lead back up to seven points. One factor in the loss was that the Blue Devils only had five players score the entire game while the Tar Heels had seven different players score. In fact, they all scored in the first half.

Jon Scheyer led the Blue Devils with 24 points as he shot seven for seven from the floor including three for three from long range. Kyle Singler was right behind Scheyer in the scoring column as he finished with 23 points. Singler was redhot early in the game as he quickly scored 13 points in the first ten minutes of the game but he then went through a dryspell until late in the second half.

Gerald Henderson didn’t have a great game but he did score 14 points. Henderson took the ball to the basket quite often as he attempted 11 free throws but he only made six of them.

Freshman Elliot Williams scored eight points while Lance Thomas added two. Williams had two or three forced shots in the second half that he has to be second guessing why he took the shots.

So North Carolina is the regular season ACC champions. Duke will either be runner-up or in third place depending how Wake Forst does in their game against Clemson. The guys will need to get rested for hopefully three days of basketball down in Atlanta this coming weekend. Let’s bring home an ACC Tournament Championship!

Category: Duke Basketball, Duke Basketball Game Notes

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2 Responses to “North Carolina pulls away late and beats Duke 79-71”

Ken Young Says:
March 8th, 2009 at 6:02 am
Can someone tell me why Coach K decided to bury Paulus this year? I know he wanted the quickness of Nolan Smith, but there were some games where we could have used Paulus hitting the 3′s. Now his confidence is shot and he plays maybe 5 minutes a game. Can anyone educate me a bit on this?
PortlandPete Says:
March 8th, 2009 at 7:28 am
To all of you “classy” Duke fans who have been cheering ever since that punk Henderson cheapshotted Psycho T, I have but two words for your viewing pleasure: SCOREBOARD, BABIES!!!!