Jeremy Roach scored 21 points and No. 9 Duke pulled away in the final 11 minutes to defeat North Carolina State 79-64 after a horrid start Monday night at Raleigh, N.C.
Jared McCain racked up 16 points, Sean Stewart had 12 points off the bench and Tyrese Proctor added 11 points for Duke (24-6, 15-4 Atlantic Coast Conference). The Blue Devils will go into their Saturday night regular-season finale at home against No. 7 North Carolina with a chance to at least gain a share of the ACC’s regular-season title.
DJ Burns Jr. pumped in 27 points on 12-for-19 shooting from the field for the Wolfpack. Mohamed Diarra supplied 10 points and seven rebounds for NC State (17-13, 9-10), which played in its home finale.
The Wolfpack lost their third game in a row and fell for the fourth time in five games. NC State failed in a chance to pick up an upset of a Top 10 team for the second time in three days after losing Saturday at then-No. 9 North Carolina.
Duke, which earned a blowout victory in Raleigh last year, won despite shooting 30 percent (9 of 30) on 3-point attempts. Nineteen offense rebounds helped negate some of the Blue Devils’ shoddy shooting.
NC State, which was hurt by 7-for-14 shooting from the free-throw line, took a 46-45 lead on Diarra’s jumper with 12:08 to play.
Stewart’s putback gave Duke the lead for good 18 seconds later. McCain and Kyle Filipowski hit 3-pointers to help stretch the lead. Another trey from McCain with less than nine minutes to go increased the margin to 60-50, and the Wolfpack couldn’t make a charge.
Duke led 33-30 at halftime despite getting no points from Filipowski, a preseason All-American who picked up two fouls in the game’s first eight minutes. Filipowski finished with nine points.
Proctor was 3-for-5 on first-half 3-point attempts, with the rest of his teammates a combined 1-for-11.
NC State scored the game’s first nine points. Burns paced the Wolfpack with 15 first-half points.
–Field Level Media