Jared McCain and Mark Mitchell each had 15 points, and No. 4 seed Duke opened the NCAA Tournament with an uneven performance before finally pulling away from 13th-seeded Vermont for a 64-47 victory Friday night.
Jeremy Roach scored 14 for the Blue Devils (25-8), who were able to advance without much offensive production from star center Kyle Filipowski. The sophomore took only one shot and scored a career-low three points, though he did grab 12 rebounds.
Seeking its sixth national championship, Duke will face No. 5 seed Wisconsin or 12th-seeded James Madison in a South Region second-round game Sunday in Brooklyn.
Shamir Bogues had 18 points for Vermont (28-7), playing in its third consecutive NCAA Tournament as America East champions. Aaron Deloney added 14 for the Catamounts, who had won 10 straight games.
Coming off two consecutive losses to in-state rivals, including an ACC quarterfinal flop against North Carolina State, the Blue Devils had trouble putting away Vermont until late in the game. Tyrese Proctor finished with 13 points on 5-of-14 shooting for Duke, which outscored the Catamounts 20-2 at the free-throw line and 10-0 in points off turnovers.
Even in New York City, where Duke has a large alumni network and fan base, the pesky Catamounts had the crowd chanting “UVM! UVM!” when they cut their deficit to two early in the second half.
McCain answered with a 3-pointer, and Duke finally started to establish some sustained breathing room midway through the second half.
A hush fell over the crowd with 1:18 left when Vermont’s leading scorer, TJ Long, went down with a serious-looking injury. Long was about to go up for a breakaway layup when his right knee buckled and he dropped to the floor. After receiving attention from an athletic trainer, he was helped off the court to applause.
Duke played without Caleb Foster again after coach Jon Scheyer said Thursday that the freshman guard will sit out the remainder of the season with a stress fracture in his right ankle.
The team had hoped Foster (7.7 points per game) could return during the NCAA Tournament, but he missed his sixth consecutive game. Foster saw multiple doctors and even tried to practice this week, but Scheyer said Foster “wasn’t able to be himself.”
Duke went on an 8-0 spree in the first half and it appeared the Blue Devils were poised to break it open when they established a 10-point cushion.
But the Catamounts answered and cut it to 34-29 at halftime. Long and Deloney each tossed in a circus bucket to beat the shot clock, after Vermont coach John Becker received a technical foul earlier in the half for yelling at an official.
Maybe he was just angry. Only a few moments earlier, Mark Mitchell had tried to throw down a furious tomahawk dunk, taking off from a great distance after breaking the press by himself, only to run into traffic and bounce it off the back of the rim.
When he got the ball again, under the basket this time, he didn’t mess around, even with his back to the bucket. He jumped, lifted the ball over his head and dunked it backward, the rare reverse overhead slam, a staple of practices and layup lines and dunk contests, but rarely spotted in the wild in its full plumage.
Mitchell shrugged it off.
“That’s not really something that’s hard for me,” Mitchell said. “I’m 6-9. I was kind of in that position and I went up with it and it worked out.”
His teammates did not.
“I was surprised. I didn’t think he was actually going to do that,” Duke guard Jared McCain said. “Mark, he’s such a kind-of-go-with-the-flow kind of guy, and when he brings some aggression, it’s like, ‘Oh, OK, Mark.’ It’s good to see him bring some aggression, some tenacity, to the team.”
Duke’s Mark Mitchell (25) slams in two during Duke’s 84-59 victory over Louisville at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, N.C., Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com
On a night when Duke posted a workmanlike win over woeful, underachieving Louisville, the kind of game that might have made James Naismith consider a better use for those peach baskets if he knew where it was going to lead, there were a few moments of transcendent basketball beauty buried in the 84-59 muck, reminders of how beautiful the game can be even in otherwise unremarkable circumstances.
Mitchell’s dunk was, unquestionably, one — an uncommon display of athletic ability, explosiveness and imagination. For a player who does so much for Duke, rebounding and defending and all but ensuring victory if he can get to double digits (31-3), but is often overlooked on a team with Kyle Filipowski and Jeremy Roach and Tyrese Proctor and McCain, that was a moment when the spotlight was almost blinding.
“He’s a complete player,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “He does so much. I don’t know that he gets the credit that he probably should, nationally, or even in our league. When you talk about key guys I think anybody would love to have Mark Mitchell on their team.”
Duke’s Jeremy Roach (3) and the bench celebrate after Spencer Hubbard (55) made a three-pointer during the second half of Duke’s 84-59 victory over Louisville at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, N.C., Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com
That moment was bookended by its basketball opposite: A late 3-pointer by 5-foot-8 former walk-on Spencer Hubbard for the third, fourth and fifth points of his career, plunging Cameron into frenzy and prompting the starters on the Duke bench to jump up and wave towels in acclimation.
“Greatest vibe in the universe, man,” McCain said.
That kind of moment is more common, almost a staple of these kinds of blowouts, but that made it no less appreciated, and certainly worth sticking around to the otherwise forgettable end.
In a long season, when not every game is a rivalry or a meeting of top-25 teams, there are games that you don’t so much play as endure. Coming off Saturday’s emotional, dramatic loss at Wake Forest and everything that went with it — Duke trapped on the floor as the Wake students rushed onto the court and Filipowski helped off injured, although he emerged unscathed and played 29 of the first 34 minutes Wednesday — this game against the ACC’s worst team didn’t come imbued with a lot of sizzle.
There are inevitably a lot of games like that, the nature of a 20-game schedule in a conference that isn’t anchored by mutual dislike the way it once was. (Maryland, we hardly knew ye.) Avoiding a letdown over the course of three months is a skill that has to be practiced and honed, just like free throws or breaking the press.
Duke’s Mark Mitchell (25) slams in two during the second half of Duke’s 84-59 victory over Louisville at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, N.C., Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com
Duke’s road to D.C. is brutal: Virginia, at N.C. State, North Carolina. This was the last game of anything less than great consequence Duke will play this season. The long and difficult march to … March is finally over.
It helps when there are moments along the way, buried like sea glass in the sand, that suddenly catch the light and dazzle. Mitchell’s dunk was that Wednesday. So was Hubbard’s first career 3-pointer. Maybe even more so. They lead you on to the next game like breadcrumbs. They lead you to the ACC tournament, and the NCAA tournament, and everything that makes the long season worthwhile.
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This story was originally published February 28, 2024, 10:26 PM.
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Sports columnist Luke DeCock joined The News & Observer in 2000 and has covered seven Final Fours, the Summer Olympics, the Super Bowl and the Carolina Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup. He is a past president of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, was the 2020 winner of the National Headliner Award as the country’s top sports columnist and has twice been named North Carolina Sportswriter of the Year.
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