Early in the second half of Pitt’s 76-47 loss to Duke on Tuesday night, Blue Devils freshman Cooper Flagg — burdened by three fouls — intercepted a pass from Jaland Lowe.
Going coast to coast and approaching the basket from the left side of the lane, Flagg was met at the hoop by Pitt’s Guillermo Diaz Graham, who is 3 inches taller.
Didn’t matter.
Flagg went up for a one-handed dunk, rising above the rim, scoring and getting fouled. The sellout crowd at Cameron Indoor Stadium roared in disbelief at the incredible display of athleticism from a player who could be the first choice in the NBA Draft later this year. Even Flagg’s teammate, Sion James, held his head in amazement.
“I knew he was going to try to dunk it,” James told the Associated Press, “but once I saw (Diaz Graham) step up, I was like, ‘Oh, well of course he’s going to lay it up now because that’s what any sane person would do.”
“As soon as I jumped, my mind kind of went blank and it just all happened really fast,” Flagg said.
After Flagg finished the three-point play, he scored on a similar dunk only 45 seconds later, giving him nine points in the first six minutes of the second half. At that point, Pitt (12-3, 3-1) was trailing 47-33 on the way to its first ACC loss of the season and the end to its five-game winning streak.
All five starters scored at least 10 points for Duke, whose past six victories have come by an average margin of nearly 26 points per game.
Flagg, who scored only five points in the first half, finished with 19. Kon Knueppel, one of three freshmen in the Duke starting lineup, recorded 17 to help the No. 4 Blue Devils (13-2, 5-0) stretch their winning streak to nine. Tyrese Proctor added 13, Khaman Maluach, the 7-foot-2 freshman center, 11 and James 10.
“We were playing a team that has a chance to win a national championship,” Pitt associate head coach Milan Brown said on the 93.7 FM postgame show. “You have to play at a certain level to compete with those guys. We didn’t do it. Hopefully, we’ll keep playing and we’ll get a chance and a crack at it (again) in March.”
Before that, Pitt plays Louisville on Saturday at Petersen Events Center. Louisville (11-5, 4-1) stretched its winning streak to five Tuesday with a 74-64 victory against Clemson.
“We’ll learn from (the loss to Duke),” Brown said. “We’ll come home, lick our wounds and take it out on the next team we play.”
Two of Pitt’s three losses have been my margins of 31 (against Mississippi State) and 29 (Duke), but Brown said he believes the Panthers can recover in time for the Louisville game.
“Unfortunately for us, this has happened before,” Brown said. “The next game we won. We made the plays needed (and beat Ohio State). Every game really tells its own story. The biggest thing is, hopefully, when we leave from Durham, just leave the taste of the feeling of this here in Durham. Take the lessons on the bus and the plane with us and learn from it. But we can’t carry this with us and take it to Saturday. That’s not what good teams do. We’re a good team. We won’t do that.”
Pitt’s guard tandem of Lowe and Ishmael Leggett, each averaging more than 17 points, totaled only 12 — eight by Lowe and four by Leggett. Together, they missed 22 of 27 shots.
“That’s a problem,” Brown said. “(Duke’s) length and athleticism and strength gave us some problems, and they were able to convert on the other end. They were gearing up to stop those two guys in the gaps.”
Cam Corhen led the Panthers with 11 points. Senior guard Damian Dunn, playing in his first game since Nov. 24 after injuring his thumb, came off the bench to score seven.
Duke led 55-38 with 10 minutes, 34 seconds left in the game before Pitt rallied to within 58-47 less than three minutes later, forcing Duke coach Jon Scheyer to call a timeout.
The Blue Devils came out of the timeout with increased defensive intensity and held Pitt scoreless for the rest of the game — one second short of eight minutes — on a game-closing 18-0 run. For the game, Pitt shot 31% (18 of 58), far below its ACC-best 49.5% coming into the game. Pitt’s 47-point total is 37 below its average for the season.
Neither team shot well in the first 10 minutes, but Pitt took its first lead, 12-11, with 11:16 left in the first half on a 3-pointer by Austin.
Before that, Pitt missed 10 of its first 12 shots and Duke was 1 of 11, including missing 6 of 9 3-point attempts. More importantly, Flagg went to the Duke bench with two fouls at 12:31.
The lead changed hands four times before Mason Gillis, a transfer from Purdue who played in the national championship game last season, hit two shots — a 2 and a 3 — to give the Blue Devils an 18-14 lead at 7:59.
Playing without Flagg, who played only 13 minutes in the first half, Duke wasn’t finished building its lead. Malauch and Knueppel scored to complete a 10-0 run.
In fact, Knueppel hit three 3-pointers in a two-minute span while Pitt’s defense left him open. Duke finished the half shooting 46.7% from beyond the arc (7 of 15) and went into intermission with a a 34-24 lead.
It was Pitt’s lowest-scoring first half of the season, with the Panthers making only eight field goals and wasting a chance to crawl closer when Corhen and Leggett missed the front end of one-and-one free-throw opportunities.
Leggett and Lowe scored only two points apiece in the first 20 minutes.
Categories: Pitt | Sports
