Blue Devil Seniors Exorcise Demons

DURHAM, NC -- When Jon Scheyer was finally finished, after 36 grueling minutes of his brand of basketball, bouncing his wiry frame off everything on the court like a golf ball ball in a billiards game, he hugged everyone within reach in the waning moments of the 82-50 Senior Night win over North Carolina. Then, he got to Brian Zoubek.

The 7-foot-1 center promptly bear hugged him and lifted the point guard off the ground.

It was without a doubt the easiest lift of Zoubek's career. Scheyer had long ago been walking on air as the Blue Devils finally beat the Heels in Cameron and edged out Maryland with a tiebreaker for the conference title.

"It was obviously a great win, and a great feeling to beat a team handily like that," Scheyer said. "We're ACC champions and it was a great way to finish out at home. It's our home court, we should come out and defend it. "

And as for the bear hug?

"I tell him to take it easy, but he forgot," Scheyer quipped, before uncorking a laugh that, at another school outside of the high IQ Devils might've seemed dorky. "He almost crushed me."

There was no taking it easy Saturday night. On paper, the game between Duke (26-5 overall, 13-3 in the ACC) and North Carolina (16-15, 5-11) might've been a mismatch destined for a game as boring as the score was lopsided. The Heels entered with just five ACC wins while Duke was fighting for the ACC regular-season championship and coming off a frustrating loss to Maryland Wednesday night.

But in Cameron Indoor Stadium, college basketball's answer to an atropine needle, where even the student manager gets an ovation that makes you wonder why you never bought a pair of ear plugs and a star like Scheyer makes you wonder if ears are such a great idea in the first place, it was reason for part celebration, part revival.

And the Blue Devils hadn't beaten the Tar Heels on home floor since 2005, or to put it another more painful way for the home team, three Tar Heels Final Fours and two UNC national titles ago.

All in all, North Carolina walked right into a runaway freight train of angry.

"There's not a lot you can say," North Carolina coach Roy Williams said afterward. "We got our tails kicked."

The Tar Heels scored the first point on a free throw, then the Blue Devils drained three straight 3-pointers -- one each by Scheyer, Singler and Nolan Smith, and Scheyer added three free throws after getting fouled behind the arc to push the lead to 12-3 just over two minutes in.

Shortly afterward, a student held up a dry erase board that read "Tonight is forever." From that point on, it must have felt that way for the Tar Heels. It got so lopsided at 28-9 that even timeout-stingy Roy Williams had to call a halt in the action.

"I knew when those 3-pointers fell," Smith said, beaming, "It was going to be our night."

Duke's lead grew to 27 by halftime and lurched ahead by as much as 36 midway through the second half.

For the Duke seniors it was a victory lap four years in the making, season upon season of frustration released in one big haymaker on the button. The trio -- Scheyer, Zoubek and forward Lance Thomas -- were freshmen on the Blue Devils' youngest team since World War II, a team without a senior. They struggled to an 8-8 league record that season. In the next two years, they would be in a position to win the ACC regular season on the final game of the season, only to twice lose to North Carolina.

The trio, the orphan class of 2010, served as the backbone of the team all four years and served as the catalysts for celebration Saturday.

"[The seniors] have been great to us," said Singler, who refused to speculate as to whether Saturday night's game was also his last contest at Duke. "They're what Duke leaders should be all about and I just feel fortunate that I've had that type of leadership."

For the Tar Heels, it was a low point in a season full of them. With the loss, the Heels dropped to the 10th seed in the ACC tournament. The Cameron Crazies squandered no opportunity to needle their rivals. One sign asked fans to text message for Carolina's season disaster relief. Another simply played UNC into "Unranked, Nobody Cares."

As the lead ballooned to 20, the crowd chanted NIT. As it hit 30, they chanted CBI. By the time it hit the high-water mark of 36, pockets chanted "Just stay home."

In retrospect, it would've been good advice.

For the Duke seniors, who, on Friday, promised to set things right in the rivalry turned askew, it was a win as big as the final margin.

The never-ending scale of comparison between the two programs had tipped heavily toward Chapel Hill during their careers. The Heels hadn't lost in Durham since 2005 and had become downright party hosts at the Final Four. To add insult to injury, the Tar Heels signed star recruit Harrison Barnes in the fall, a player Krzyzewski had recruited so long it seemed like the first visit was by ultrasound wand.

But the seniors, who carried Duke through the down times, carried the Blue Devils back to the top of the ACC.

Scheyer finished with 20 points, but more impressively for the converted shooting guard, seven assists without a turnover. Zoubek hit all four field goals and finished with 13 rebounds.

Thomas, the man who plays defense so tenaciously he probably wakes up every morning boxing out his own pillow, stifled North Carolina's interior.

"These seniors were great, such a good group," Krzyzewski said. "They deserve this moment and I'm really, really happy for them"

There were concerns for Duke's future, too. The Big Three took 47 of the team's 57 shots, which may prove problematic when they shoot 31.9 percent, as they did against North Carolina the first time.

The Plumlee brothers, a duo players and coaches have cited as a key for the team's fate in March, turned in an unimpressive game, and earned a tongue-lashing from Krzyzewski in the first half that might've melted the paint off the wall, had Miles not stood in the way.

But in the end, the seniors and their imperfect but impressive team cut down the nets and celebrated on the Cameron floor in T-shirts emblazoned with 17-0, Duke's record for home wins in a season, shirts designed by Singler and Thomas.

Amid the euphoria of the victory, of the farewell of Scheyer, the player who grew from a jump-shooting, body-by-pipe-cleaner player into the ACC's most efficient point guard -- if still with a set of pipe-cleaner limbs, there was some reason to believe that this team could follow through on a promise Scheyer made in his final words as a player in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

"We're not done," Scheyer told the crowd, his final words at center court.

Not with the winning. Not even with the bear hugs.