In a tournament riddled with upsets, the No. 1 seed Duke Blue Devils bucked the trend and won the Atlantic Coast Conference finals Sunday against the No. 7 seed Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, 65-61.
With 3:27 left in the game, the Jackets went down 10 points, but Tech stormed back with a 9-0 run and cut the Duke lead to just one with 48 seconds off a dunk by freshman forward Derrick Favors.
On the Devils’ next possession, Duke senior Jon Scheyer hit an open 3-pointer, the biggest shot of the tournament, to go up by four and ice the game.
Prior to the made shot, Scheyer was 1-of-8 from beyond the arc and had been struggling all tournament with his shooting.
“At the end, Jon Scheyer made an unbelievable shot,” Tech head coach Paul Hewitt said. “If you’re a basketball fan, enjoy it for what it is. I told him after the game, ‘That was a hell of a shot you just made’... so I think we should enjoy it for what it was, a great basketball game.”
Despite his shooting troubles recently, Scheyer still felt confident, and he wanted the ball at the end.
“My shot has been better, I will say that,” Scheyer said. “Even though I wasn’t hitting, I still wanted the opportunity in the end to shoot the ball. They set a really good screen for me, and I’m just happy it went in. I didn’t want to let my team down there.”
Scheyer’s shot ultimately won the game, but the free-throw shooting for Duke kept the Devils in the game to give the senior a chance to win it all.
The Devils went to the line 28 times, converting on 24 of them, and junior Kyle Singler hit 14-of-16 alone, while Tech only made 12-of-16.
Before Scheyer’s shot to win the game, the Devils had not made a field goal since a dunk by Mason Plumlee with 4:22 remaining.
“(Making free throws) was big for us because we didn’t really make any shots toward the end of the game, so making free throws was big for us,” Singler said.
Duke made more free throws, but the Jackets outrebounded the Devils, made four more field goals, shot nearly 10 percent better from the field and equaled the Devils in 3-point shooting with five each, though the Jackets did have seven more turnovers.
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