Ingram leads Duke past No. 13 Louisville, 72-65

Kennard, a freshman, was four points from his season high set last month against Notre Dame. “Each game, we’re building”. “I think we lose that game by 15 points because we wouldn’t be able to get there”.

N.C. State: Saturday marked the 28th anniversary of the Wolfpack’s last win in Cameron Indoor Stadium against a Krzyzewski-coached Duke team. The Blue Devils lost on each of the two previous Mondays, first to Syracuse and then at No. 12 Miami. They had Coach K for this one – he missed the trip to Georgia Tech after falling ill and wound up watching that game from a Duke University Hospital room.

Lewis finished with 11 points, while Lee had 10 on 3-of-15 shooting and missed all five of his 3-point attempts in his return from a knee bruise that kept him out of the Boston College win on Saturday. What was less certain, though, was how the young, depth-strapped Blue Devils would respond to that pressure.

Head Coach Rick Pitino said “we missed about 7-8 layups in the first half”.

Is there any tougher gauntlet in college basketball than the Louisville, Virginia, North Carolina stretch the Duke Blue Devils are about to embark upon? Louisville fell behind by 15 points early in the second half, rallied with a 13 point run to make a game of it, nosed in front 58-57 with 6 minutes left on an old fashioned 3-point play by Quentin Snider. Snider scored all of his points in the second half before fouling out at the 2:01 mark.

Ingram had 18 points and 10 rebounds, Grayson Allen scored 19 points and Kennard had 11 for the Blue Devils (18-6, 7-4), who hit 10 of 12 free throws in the final 3:14 to beat a ranked opponent for the first time this season. The most convincing aspect of this win-aside from Ingram’s total command of the game in the final minutes-was the entire team’s ability to stand strong in the face of adversity that, as recently as two weeks ago, could have buckled the Blue Devils and sent them to another loss on the back end of a Saturday-Monday turn-around.

After losing four of five in January, Duke has won three straight. The short bench may just be finding the footing it has been desperately looking for all season long-and it may be blossoming just in time.

“We don’t deserve this”, said Lewis, who transferred from Cleveland State last spring. “We knew that we’d been in this position before and we were kind of just drawing off experience”.

Krzyzewski joked that when he returned to practice, “I asked them, ‘Is it alright to be here?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘That’s smart of you because I still control playing time'”.