Kihei made Duke sweat, but the Devils had just enough to win

By Jerry Ratcliffe

In a handshake line done the right way on Wednesday night, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski paused when he got to Virginia’s Kihei Clark and told him just how good the Cavaliers’ point guard was.

While Clark has his detractors, oddly more from his own ranks than those of opponents, no one could deny how good the diminutive UVA guard was against the top-10 Blue Devils. During one long stretch of the first half, the tenacious, California-bred Clark scored 18 straight points, having reeled off six 3-pointers.

By halftime, Krzyzewski had to make an adjustment. He isn’t in the Hall of Fame for nothing. Coach K decided to sic Jeremy Roach onto Clark in hopes of at least cooling off the UVA sharpshooter.

While Roach didn’t completely shut Clark down, he did limit Clark to six points and no triples. Roach’s defensive performance was called “the differentiator” of the game by Krzyzewski.

“I thought our defense was excellent and Clark had a heck of a game,” Krzyzewski said. “He’s as good a guard as there is in the league. That shooting performance he put on in the first half made us change our defense. Jeremy came in, and not that he stopped Clark, but he defended him.”

Clark finished with a career-high 25 points and career highs of six 3-pointers and 11 attempted 3-pointers, all in front of about 20 family members who flew in from Hawaii to watch him play his final two home games. Had Roach not checked Clark, who knows what numbers he might have put up.

He became only the fifth player in Virginia history to post 1,000 career points and 500 assists, joining the likes of John Crotty, Sean Singletary, London Perrantes and Donald Hand.

Coach K didn’t know those facts, but had watched Clark for four years and made sure the guard had his admiration after the game.

“He just said I was one of the best guards in the conference,” Clark said afterward. “He’s one of the great coaches in the history of the game and for him to say that to me felt pretty good.”

Limiting Clark in the second half was just one of the successful strategies Krzyzewski deployed. After having surrendered an eye-popping 52 points in the lane to Virginia in the first meeting a couple of weeks ago, he wasn’t going to allow that to happen in the rematch.

“We defended [Virginia’s] bigs,” Coach K said. “They had 24 and 16 last time, but they had two points this time. I think we only gave up single digits in the paint, and still, we were that close to losing.”

Krzyzewski knew Duke’s defense would be better this time because of the way his team prepared in practice in the days leading up to the game. He shared a conversation he had with assistant Chris Carawell, that his squad “was looking like an old Duke team,” from the floor-slapping days.

“The maturity of our team preparation went to a different level … they’re ‘getting it,’” Krzyzewski said.

The Duke coach also went to an open-set, small-ball lineup late when he took 6-foot-10 Mark Williams out, which left Tony Bennett to use either Kadin Shedrick on Paolo Banchero or a more mobile wing, and then replace Shedrick with Kody Stattmann, who had difficulty matching up.

“We were going to attack their bigs had they stayed with them,” Krzyzewski said.

Bennett expected that move at some point.

“It was pick your poison,” Bennett said. “Can we get a matchup? I was hoping they wouldn’t go to it.”

As good a job as UVA’s undersized Jayden Gardner did against Banchero (yes, he had some help in doubling the post at times), this go round the Cavaliers didn’t have quite enough to pull off the sweep.

Banchero had scored in double figures in every game this season except in his two meetings against Virginia. In the two meetings, he averaged 8.5 points per game, while shooting 22.7 percent (5 for 22) with seven turnovers. Gardner did the bulk of that defensive work.

With all that taken into account, it took Duke everything it had to eke out a win over Virginia, just as Krzyzewski aptly pointed out.

“It was just another Duke-Virginia game,” Coach K said. “We could have won at our place and they could have won tonight.”

He was correct, of course. Over the last 14 meetings between the Cavaliers and Blue Devils, the average score has been: Duke 65.9, Virginia 64.4.

Virginia lost, but it gained national respect from some of the naysayers.

“I complimented the team and I told them, ‘You battled,’” Bennett said of his postgame message. “Let’s learn and tighten up.”

Florida State is coming to town Saturday for the last home game and Senior Day. Tighten up, indeed.