No. 2 Duke men's basketball blows out Wake Forest 93-60 on senior night, Flagg scores 28
Endings are hard. This one was hard for the seniors in the stands, watching a basketball game from Section 17 in Cameron Indoor Stadium for the last time. It wasn’t easy for all the Blue Devils who will leave Durham when their eligibility expires or the NBA beckons. So for the sake of nostalgia, they made it a good one.
Duke played its penultimate regular-season game against Wake Forest Monday night. The ACC rematch was the home team’s last hurrah in Cameron — and a hurrah indeed. Duke snagged a 93-60 win from the Demon Deacons, this one much more decisive than before. The victory put another jewel in the crown Jon Scheyer wears, as the young head coach stayed undefeated at home for the second time in just three years and the 20th time in program history. It also guaranteed his team a share of the ACC regular-season title.
"To finish it off the right way, to get win number 27, to get ACC win number 18, means a lot," Scheyer said in his press conference after the game.
The bench gave a standing ovation. Sion James laughed as he clapped from the sideline, marvelling at the sequence he had just watched unfold in the late minutes of the second half. Cooper Flagg dunked. Then he stopped Wake Forest’s next attempt at the basket and blocked the one following that. On a fast break, Tyrese Proctor threw in a layup, and in the next frame, stole the ball from the visitors. He passed the ball to Kon Knueppel, who leaped up from downtown in picture-perfect form to make his second three of the contest.
"Yeah, it's not normal what these guys are doing," Scheyer said. "We don't take it lightly, and we don't take it for granted."
In the early minutes of its second half against Duke (27-3, 18-1 in the ACC), Wake Forest hung tough. The Demon Deacons (20-10, 12-7 in the ACC) scored three in a row at the top of the period before the home team made any noise. Ty-Laur Johnson opened with a triple, Hunter Sallis followed with a layup and then made his and-one opportunity, cutting Duke’s lead to 40-33.
Unfortunately for Wake Forest, Cooper Flagg was on the court.
In the second period, the rookie phenom pulled out every stop, starting with a layup and moving from there to a short-range jumper and then a perfect one from downtown. Having made shots from all three levels of the court, he helped out his teammates.
Flagg dribbled into Wake Forest’s defense, performed one of his classic spin moves and looked at the basket — only to pass the ball far out to the right corner, where James was ready for a catch-and-release three. He swished it.
"As a coach, [Flagg] allows you to do a lot of different things because of his versatility. He's guarding one through five," Scheyer said. "There's not really a match up for him. And if you double team he passes; if it's one-on-one, he scores it."
James’ three was the fourth one Duke made in the first eight minutes of the second half, on seven attempts. Two of them came from Flagg and another from Isaiah Evans, whose tenacious offense had infected the court in the first period and gone nowhere since. The next two would come from Mason Gillis, who put them both up in the span of 26 seconds, earning a Cameron Indoor trifecta of approval: A high-five from Scheyer, a timeout from Steve Forbes and LMFAO’s “Shots” over the loudspeaker. The Blue Devils led 65-41 with 11:27 remaining.
"We've all developed, and we've all worked on our weaknesses," Maluach said. "We got better from game to game."
It didn’t start like this. As senior night commenced, seconds ticked by, and Duke did not score. Then minutes passed. From the top of the arc, Khaman Malauch launched a three — which bounced off the rim. It wasn’t until the jumbotron read 16:23 that Knueppel finally found a crack in Duke’s dam and, in perfect shooting form, made good on a close-range jump shot.
"I thought it was a great collective effort against a good team where we didn't necessarily make all the shots right away," Scheyer said. "I thought they took us out of our offensive rhythm."
Six minutes into the game, Duke started to look more like itself. James stared down the basket from the right corner of the court, determined to make his triple. He did. Johnson quickly followed with a layup, but Flagg took the ball right back to Wake Forest’s basket and launched a three of his own.
When Cameron Hildreth missed a jumper on the next play, Evans caught his first board and wasted no time in moving the ball. He ran in a semicircle around the arc before tossing up a layup to put Duke up 10-6. Sallis finally sank his own jumper — he had been fielding “airball” taunts from the student section all night — but Evans took away the Demon Deacon’s big moment with a triple of his own. Fittingly, Evans won his first ACC Rookie of the Week earlier Monday afternoon.
The half ended nothing like how it started. James passed to Knueppel, who threw up a jumper that Maluach slammed into a dunk. On Duke’s next possession, after three offensive rebounds (one from James, two from Maluach), Knueppel sealed the play with a triple. Before Wake Forest could muster a response, James had the ball back on the visitors’ side of the court and was sinking a triple of his own.
The Demon Deacons got the last word for the first half; an Efton Reid III third-time’s-a-charm 3-pointer closed out the half with his team down 13, 40-27. But the Blue Devils had every other word.
Endings are hard. But for Duke, this one wasn’t so bad.
The Blue Devils will end their regular season against their Tobacco Road rivals Saturday at 6:30 p.m.
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| Sports Managing Editor
Sophie Levenson is a Trinity junior and a sports managing editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.
