In the dominant win against Pittsburgh, Duke reinforced the distance between itself and the rest of the ACC

On By Littum

Sion James couldn’t believe it.

Cooper Flagg stole the basketball from Pittsburgh’s Jaland Lowe and ran down the court in transition. In a play that might have registered on the seismic counters in Durham — both for its score and the crowd’s response — Flagg slammed the ball over Guillermo Diaz Graham for the season-high, drawing a roar from the Cameron Indoor Stadium crowd. As teammates Kon Kneuppel, Khaman Maluach and Tyrese Proctor rushed over to celebrate, James’ mouth dropped open in utter disbelief.

“I’ve never seen a dunk like that while I’m on the field … I almost lost my mind when I was out there,” Malauch said.

“That’s the best dunk in the game I’ve ever seen,” Proctor added.

“We’ve had a couple of guys over the years make plays that just ignited everybody in the building and there was one of those moments tonight,” head coach Jon Scheyer said.

While no play from the Blue Devils’ 76-47 victory over the Panthers was as impressive as Flagg’s poster over Diaz Graham, the end result — cold-blooded, ruthless basketball — was the same throughout the entire 40 minutes. Some of that may be thanks to old-fashioned revenge, when Pittsburgh upset Duke at Cameron Indoor last season for the first time in 45 years. Forward Blake Hinson, who had gone 7-of-7 from beyond the arc, mocked the Cameron Crazies at the press table after the win.

But can revenge alone explain the 29-point dismantling of Pittsburgh? The Panthers, one of the ACC’s top teams, were the first team out of the AP poll on Jan. 6 and ranked 22nd nationally in offensive efficiency per. KenPom.

“I think it’s crazy that they’re not ranked with what they’ve done this season,” Scheyer said of the Panthers.

Of course, the goal of any top-ranked college basketball team is to win a national championship, something Duke is well poised to do this season. However, this year’s Blue Devils seem to have adopted a separate goal – to impose their will on the rest of the ACC. In five conference games, Duke has outscored its opponents by an average of 23.2 points per game. game, which is 2.4 points better than its margin for non-conference games.

Why is that point difference so big? Well, this Blue Devil team is an embarrassment of riches. Take Knueppel, for example. The freshman finished with a healthy 17 points and shot 4-of-5 from deep in the final 27 minutes of the game after a pair of early misses from beyond the arc.

“It’s funny how it works because I felt like the two best looks of the night were the first two that didn’t go (in),” Knueppel said. “Shooting is a fickle thing. Sometimes it goes in and sometimes it doesn’t, (you) just have to keep putting them up.”

Knueppel’s impact extends far beyond shooting in ways that traditional box score statistics don’t reflect. Pittsburgh’s guards tried to run against him for most of the game, but the Milwaukee native remained untouched, forcing tough shots to lead to a poor 31% shooting for the Panthers.

Proctor, the longest tenured starter on the Blue Devils, also played a dynamic game, as reflected by his outstanding plus-minus of plus-42. The junior scored Duke’s final 10 points of the contest, which included a rare five-point play after a flagrant-2 foul on the Panthers’ Damian Dunn. In addition, the Sydney native assisted on four 3-pointers in the first half, which included back-to-back feeds to Knueppel.

“Me and (Knueppel), we’re both elite 3-point shooters, so a lot of teams when we get downhill are going to collapse,” Proctor said. “It’s just being able to read and trust each other that we will make the right reads.”

Duke’s starting five each scored in double figures, their first time since the Blue Devils’ Nov. 8 win against Army. With how deep Duke’s roster is, it might come as a surprise that the second-half bench combined for no points and just 12 minutes. Sophomore guard Caleb Foster, who started the first seven games of the 2024-2025 campaign, was limited to just nine minutes, a career-low. While that fact may reflect an underachieving season from the Harrisburg, NC, native, it also shows just how dominant the Blue Devils’ victory really was.

The lineup of James, Proctor, Knueppel, Flagg and Maluach, plus a strong supporting cast, can contend with any title-hungry team. But “contending” doesn’t describe what has happened as Duke has faced its ACC rivals thus far. The Blue Devils appear to be fighting mortals in conference play.

Granted, the ACC is having a bad year with only five of its teams projected to dance in Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology. And Duke could very well have its work cut out for it in a road contest against Clemson on Feb. 8, as well as its two matchups against archrival North Carolina. But if Duke continues to execute as well as it did against Pittsburgh, even those challenges may feel less like obstacles and more like opportunities to assert its supremacy.

Right now, the rest of the ACC is simply trying to keep up.