Done dancing
Powerhouse Duke put an end to URI’s tournament hopes, the No. 2 Blue Devils rolling 87-62.
ccotter@ricentral.com
PITTSBURGH — No. 2 Duke might as well have been a 50-foot high brick wall from No. 7 Rhode Island’s point of view on Saturday. During their second-round game of the NCAA Tournament, the Rams couldn’t find a way over, through or around the Blue Devils, who comfortably cruised to a 87-62 victory at PPG Paints Arena.
“Credit Duke, they played an A-plus game,” URI head coach Dan Hurley said. “They looked like an NBA team out there with their size and length, and our guys fought. We just couldn’t find enough ways to score, and couldn’t find enough ways to stop a team that probably started five first-round picks.”
“We played really well today,” Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “From start to finish, it was one of our best games. And I thought we played in a very mature manner, because we’re playing a championship team, a program that has great maturity and toughness, and we showed that today, too. And I’m just glad a lot more of our shots went in than theirs. It was an honor to coach against them and play against them. They’re an outstanding team, and we were an outstanding team today.”
Aside from a 7-2 run to start the game, the Rams could never run with Coach K and his Blue Devils. Senior wing E.C. Matthews was the lone Rhody player to put up an efficient shooting effort against the vaunted Duke 2-3 zone, scoring a game-high 23 points on 19 shots.
Senior wing Jared Terrell missed his first five field goal attempts in the first half, struggling his way to a 10-point, 4-for-13 afternoon from the field. Including the three games in the A-10 tournament, Terrell finished the season on a 5-for-37 stretch on 2-point attempts.
“They just played the zone so high,” Terrell said. “Hard to catch a wind because they played so far off the line. It’s difficult. You didn’t want to shoot a three every possession. We just tried to get to the middle and show corners and in the corners it was just tough getting over their big guys.”
The three-headed frontcourt monster of freshman Marvin Bagley, freshman Wendell Carter and Gary Trent had their way against the Ram defense. The trio combined to score 53 of Duke’s 87 points, while as a team the Blue Devils won the battle in the paint, 36-28.
The highly-touted Bagley did the bulk of the damage in the paint, scoring 22 points and snatching nine rebounds. Trent and Carter both registered double-figure scoring, to go along with a combined seven assists.
“Number 1,” Stan Robinson responded where Bagley ranks of the players he’s had to guard. “That’s it. Number 1.”
The Blue Devils were also absurdly efficient from outside. After starting 1-for-6 from 3-point range, senior guard Grayson Allen and co. began torching the Rams. Allen was 3-for4 on 3-point attempts, and his team had a total of 10 makes on 21 tries. Following the slow start, they finished 9-for-15.
“With the one-day prep, we probably could have had a week prep,” Hurley said. “It was just, I think, a tough matchup for us. If that’s a 2 seed, just looking at all of the 1s and 2s, you know, I wish we would have had a shot at one of the other seven 1s and 2s. They played an A-plus game. They were locked in. To make 10 threes, and several of them were pretty contested, and then to have the inside game with Carter and Bagley and bringing [Marques] Bolden off the bench.”
To add to their frustration, touch fouls on defense led to a handful of key players missing most of the first half. Fresman guard Fatts Russell, who was the start of Thursday’s firstround win over Oklahoma, picked up three personals in the first half. Robinson and Terrell both earned a pair of whistles in the first 20 minutes, making already difficult defensive assignments close to impossible.
Trailing by 17 at the break, the Rams needed some quick strikes to get back in the game. Nothing close to that was in order against the disciplined Blue Devils, who used the first eight minutes to beef their lead up to 27 points.
The lopsided score and season-ending loss gave the Rams one silver-lining: a chance for Hurley to take out his five seniors, sharing a moment with each of the departing players.
“These guys came in when we were bad,724 or whatever they were the year before I got here,” Hurley said. “So they came in on a basement level program with not a whole lot going on.
“It’s just the years together, so many memories, so many games, you know, so many practices, so many trips. Just to come in again at the bottom, and then win championships with these guys and get to the tournament two years in a row and win a game in the tournament. And just so much runs through your mind because we’re all family, too.
After the game finally ended, Matthews and Hurley walked off the court together one last time. Matthews draped his arm over his head coach’s shoulder, and both had tears in their eyes as they headed for the locker room.
“This is my guy,” Matthew said. “I know we’re not the same color, but he’s definitely my father. Just trying to walk off the court the right way. Things didn’t go our way, but just what we’ve done. When we both came here, him coaching me as a player. We picked this program off the ground. We was flying for about five years. We landed and we just wanted to walk off the court the right way. You know I love this guy.”
“There’s some programs they could talk about family, they put their hands in and they say family on three, and it’s fake,” Hurley said. “Not with us. And I just wish that we had a chance, I wish they would have played worse. Wish we would have played better. Wish we could have gone out with a little more honor in our last game.”
Even with four of their five starters headed for new ventures, the Rams have reason to believe they can get back to the heights of the past two seasons.
“With Fatts, Jeff Dowtin and Cyril [Langevine], those are a couple of the best young players in our league, then we have top 25 recruiting class, top 30 recruiting class coming in,” Hurley said. “So the personnel will, I think, at some point, in the next year or two, be, and a lot of what we have coming in is size. And tremendous talent like the guys who were just on this dais.
“But there’s a whole lot more room for this program to grow around these players, and that’s absolutely essential if the University, and if the athletic department, our fans, want us to be able to get beyond this point as a program. The investment’s going to have to increase. But that’s like that with any program that’s trying to get better. You know, you have to rely on your expectations with your investment, and these players deserve to operate at the highest level of our league, if you want to stay there.”
“This is my guy. I know we’re not tHE sAME COLOr, But HE DEfiNItELy is my father. Just trying to walk off the court the right way. Things didn’t go our way, but just what we’ve done... We picked this program off the ground.” —E.C. Matthews on Dan Hurley