DURHAM, N.C. — With less than 10 seconds to go in the game on Thursday night, the Cameron Crazies couldn’t have been feeling too good. Their team led by only three points and Virginia was pushing the ball quickly up the court.
However, Jontel Evans and Mike Scott missed 3-pointers as time expired and No. 8 Duke escaped with 61-58 victory at Cameron Indoor Stadium, snapping Virginia’s 12-game winning streak in the process.
“I thought our guys kept their composure,” said Virginia coach Tony Bennett, when asked about the last sequence. “We got the stop. It was a little bit wild the way we got the stop.
“We came down and got two good looks. We knew we needed a 3...Joe set a great screen and Mike got a room-and-rhythm shot.”
Scott missed badly from the corner, but the ball bounced to a wide open Evans, who fired from the top of the key.
“It felt good and everybody said it looked good,” Evans said, “but it just didn’t fall.”
No. 16 UVa (14-2, 1-1) was led by Scott, who had one of the most impressive games of his career in scoring a game-high 23 points and grabbing nine rebounds.
Joe Harris added 14 for UVa, which plays at Georgia Tech on Thursday. Sammy Zeglinski was scoreless on 0-of-8 shooting.
The Cavaliers showed a fortitude that they didn’t have in last year’s loss at Cameron. They trailed by nine in the second half but never caved.
“We’re a completely different team than last year,” Harris said. “We got in a tough situation where we had to battle and overcome some adversity.
“We stuck right with them and played them tough. Unfortunately we didn’t come out with a win, but we battled back and had a couple chances at the end.”
Duke (14-2, 2-0) got 12 points and seven rebounds from Mason Plumlee, who was just 2 of 10 from the free-throw line.
Missed free throws by Duke’s Ryan Kelly with 1:02 left gave Virginia a last chance.
Akil Mitchell slammed home a missed shot by Evans to make it 61-58 with 47 seconds remaining.
Virginia then forced Seth Curry into a missed shot and raced up the court for its final gasps.
“Nobody wants a moral victory, but in this setting you kind of have to look at it that way,” Mitchell said. “Last year our team got down and kind of quit. This year, it really speaks to our character and our leadership that we got down and battled back to make this a close game.”
In the first half, the Cavaliers didn’t look the least bit intimidated by their surroundings in jumping out to a quick 5-0 lead on the strength of a Scott jumper and a Harris 3-pointer.
Virginia fans had to have thought they were dreaming with all the dunks they were witnessing by their Wahoos.
“We looked like one of the most athletic teams in America dunking on everybody,” Harris said. “We were playing with a lot of intensity and a lot of passion. We really wanted to win and you could tell - guys were selling out, crashing the glass. We had a lot of put-back dunks and that kind of stuff.
“I think it was the excitement and hype of the game, and playing in the big-game atmosphere of Cameron. It was a lot of fun.”
UVa was able to take advantage of Duke’s aggressiveness with backdoor cuts that resulted in slams, including one sweet dish from Zeglinski to freshman Paul Jesperson, who threw down a two-hand dunk to give Virginia its biggest lead of the half, 21-15.
Scott was a blistering 7 of 10 from the field in the stanza, which included two slams -- one of which he got a friendly roll on and resulted in a 3-point play after a foul by Andre Dawkins. At that point, it really seemed to be Virginia’s night.
Two possessions later, Scott assisted on a dunk by Akil Mitchell.
After Kelly trimmed the lead to a point on a layup, Scott drilled a 3-pointer from the wing to give Virginia a 32-28 lead at the break. UVa shot 52 percent in the stanza.
After the break, Scott hit a baseline fadeaway for a 34-30 Virginia lead. However, he was held to just four points the rest of the way.
“The Plumlees, I thought, were the key to the game -- their physicality and our defense,” said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, referring to the brothers. “I thought we played much better defense on Scott in the second half and that was both Mason and Miles.”
The Blue Devils hit eight of their first 11 shots after the intermission.
“They just came out and got whatever they wanted,” Scott said.
Dunks
Virginia shot just 29 percent in the second half, while Duke shot 61 percent...Harris said he was doing OK after his run-in with Duke’s Ryan Kelly. With just over a minute to play, Harris got poked in both eyes by the Duke big man. “It was kind of hard to see at first,” said Harris, who split a pair of free throws as a result of the play, “but after a while my vision started coming back.”...Evans had a season-high six assists...Duke became the second team to score over 60 points on Virginia this season (Seattle)...Scott moved into 29th place on Virginia’s career scoring list with (1,233 points), moving past Roger Mason, Jr., Kenny Turner and Jim Miller.
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