No. 1 Duke eliminates Georgia Tech in ACC tournament

The Blue Devils (29-3) advanced to the semifinals, where they will face either Wake Forest or North Carolina at 7 p.m. Friday.

“You know, I don’t really take any satisfaction when it comes to losing, regardless if it was the last game or not, regardless if Duke was the No. 1 team or not,” Terry said. “There’s no real satisfaction there with going out with a loss. But I’m happy that we did fight, and we brought a lot of effort tonight.”

Tech began Thursday’s action hot offensively, getting three triples from Powell en route to a 16-8 lead 8½ minutes into the contest. Duke missed their first eight 3-point shot during that stretch.

The fourth 3-pointer of the afternoon for Tech came out of the unlikely hands of Darrion Sutton, the first 3 of the season for the freshman, that gave Tech a 19-8 lead. Lance Terry’s two-handed dunk and Ndongo’s strong layup from the right block, respectively, kept Tech ahead 11 with 7:58 on the clock.

Ndongo gave Tech a 26-12 lead with five minutes on the clock when he tipped in a missed layup.

“We wanted to be really physical. We watched the Clemson game (against Duke), and Clemson did a good job of being really physical with them, trying to make it hard on catches, entry passes and all the things of that nature,” Stoudamire said. “Those are the things that we want to do, and we were able to do that for that first half. We held up for the first 17 and a half minutes or so, and that was pretty much it.

“The one thing about it is, Duke is not trying to trick you. It’s been like that since the beginning of time. They’re not trying to trick you. They’re not doing any gimmicks. It’s pretty straightforward. I thought our guys did a good job of handling that for the first 17 and a half minutes.”

Kon Knueppel’s layup was followed by a monster, one-handed block from Flagg on the other end which led to a transition 3 from Isaiah Evans and forced Tech coach Damon Stoudamire to call timeout. Evans’ 3 was Duke’s first in 14 attempts.

Duke ended the half on a 12-5 run to get within 31-26 at the break, but Flagg left the game at the 2:46 mark with an injury.

The Blue Devils dominated the first five minutes of the second half even without their best player, going up 38-31 thanks to a 12-0 run that ended with Sion James’ steal and one-handed slam.

“I thought the last four minutes from probably the first four minutes of the second half, the game got away from us a little bit, and when I say that, Duke is a team of runs,” Stoudamire said. “I thought (Tech) did a good job overall collectively in the game withstanding those runs, but those two runs hurt us. We just couldn’t weather the storm.”

Tech just couldn’t keep up offensively, and even after pulling within 48-43 on a Terry 3, watched Duke score five straight to extend the margin back to 54-43 on the strength of an Evans 3 from the left corner. The Jackets didn’t have the recipe for a comeback.

Duke, led by Knueppel’s 28 points, shot 50% in the second half after shooting only 36.7% in the second half. The Blue Devils also went 17-of-19 from the line.