DUKE DOWNS PANTHERS
Toney’s big night, Capel’s return spoiled by Duke’s talent superiority
DURHAM, N.C. — While it’s impossible to predict every specific of the scene awaiting him and just as unlikely to know how he would feel in that moment, Jeff Capel was, above all else, excited about Pitt’s game Tuesday night at Duke, the school he played for four seasons and coached at for another seven.
Never before had he been inside Cameron Indoor Stadium as an opponent, but the opportunity to return to a place that, in some ways, is home was enthralling.
At least some of that giddiness came from not what the occasion meant to him, but for his team.
“Anytime you get a chance to play against one of the best teams and the best programs in the history of college basketball, you should be excited about the challenge,” the second-year Pitt coach said Monday.
Even when the program’s accomplished history is stripped away, the challenge of facing a top-10 team anchored by players who were some of the highest-rated recruits over the past several seasons is obvious. For much of the night, tasked with countering that force, the Panthers showed they could compete or at least muster enough resiliency to make it a surprisingly competitive game in the final four minutes.
Toppling a 16½-point favorite on the road, though, was simply too much.
Au’Diese Toney poured in a career-high 27 points, playing
his best game in what has been a streak of good games over the past month, but the defense struggled to contain No. 9 Duke — namely standout freshman center Vernon Carey Jr. — and was the victim of a late, 11-0 run in a 7967 loss.
After trailing by 11 at halftime, the second half didn’t offer a reprieve, at least at first, for the Panthers (13-8, 46 ACC). Duke scored 15 points in the half’s first 6:17, finished off by a Carey free throw that gave it its largest lead of the night to that point, 60-42.
But Pitt, as it had done in the first half from a much smaller deficit, pushed back. What had been a porous defense started stringing together stops, and its erratic offense found some consistency.
After falling into that 18point hole, it outscored the Blue Devils (17-3, 7-2), 23-8, with 13 of those points coming from Toney, who was playing 80 miles north of Fayetteville, where he lived and played his final high school season.
After a basket from freshman center Abdoul Karim Coulibaly, the Panthers trailed by just three, 68-65, with 4:28 remaining.
Duke, with a sizable advantage in talent, had a final push within it.
As Pitt suddenly went cold, its opponent capitalized, scoring seven unanswered points with a Cassius Stanley 3-pointer making it a 10-point game, with 2:34 left. A Carey dunk off an alleyoop with 1:29 left that came after the Blue Devils broke Pitt’s full-court press removed whatever doubt might have remained about the outcome.
The sheer force of Carey, at 6 feet 10 and 270 pounds, was apparent from the opening tip. Though he was hounded with double teams on any number of possessions, he finished with 26 points and 13 rebounds after coming into the night averaging 16.9 points and 8.3 rebounds per game.
The Panthers allowed Duke to shoot 48.4% from the field and average 1.23 points per possession in the losing effort. The Blue Devils were ranked fifth in offensive efficiency among 353 Division I teams heading into the matchup.
Justin Champagnie added 13 points for Pitt, but was the only other player to finish the night in double figures.
Xavier Johnson (nine points), Trey McGowens (two) and Ryan Murphy (zero), three of Pitt’s four leading scorers this season, combined for just 11 points.
Carey accounted for 11 of Duke’s first 13 points, but Pitt remained close, weathering a 9-2 hole to score 10 unanswered points and, even with Carey’s production trail by only two, 22-20, after a pair of free throws from McGowens with 7:42 remaining in the half.
Seemingly, the Panthers had survived the push, at least the initial and most dangerous one, when the fervor and aura of the famed gym is at its height, especially for a visiting team with a majority of its roster playing there for the first time.
The Blue Devils, however, weren’t done.
Over the next four minutes, Duke went on a 13-3 run, punctuated by a 3 from 6-foot-7 forward Jack White, and went into halftime up by 11, 45-34.