Duke’s Blue Devil mascot was trying to be funny when he etched out “Buzzkill” on the athletic tape across the oversized forehead of his costume. Pretty apt description, though of what Georgia Tech was going for on Tuesday night.
The Yellow Jackets spent the first half trying to shock No. 16 Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium, a team trying to regroup after a loss at Notre Dame. Tech was supposed to be regrouping too, without Robert Carter Jr., but didn’t look like it the first 20 minutes.
But Duke still looked like Duke for the final 20 minutes and ran off with a 79-57 win. Jabari Parker still wasn’t quite himself for Duke (12-3, 1-1), with a relatively tame 12 points, but Rodney Hood blitzed Tech from 3-point range, hitting 5 of 7 shots from behind the arc on his way to 27 points.
Tech (9-6, 0-2) trailed by only one point at halftime before losing the first two minutes of the second half and its grip on the game.
Two games into the treacherous new ACC schedule, with Carter Jr. back in Atlanta having arthroscopic knee surgery, the Yellow Jackets could hang with Duke for 20 minutes but no more.
The Blue Devils, coming off a loss at Notre Dame in their ACC opener, had lost consecutive games only once in the past five seasons. They’re now 22-1 after losses in that span.
Tech senior center Daniel Miller loves to play at Cameron and showed it with nearly a double-double by halftime, with eight points and seven rebounds, on his way to 14 points and eight rebounds for the game. He went 4-for-4 from the floor in the first half, complete with a dunk and a sky hook against the smaller Parker, to go with seven defensive rebounds.
Marcus Georges-Hunt, the sole underclassman in Tech’s starting lineup, came out playing with abandon, scoring 11 of his 18 points in the first half, including three monster drives through the heart of Duke’s defense.
But Tech’s aggressiveness waned in the second half, and the Yellow Jackets settled for some tough outside shots. They took only six free throws all game and missed all six, as opposed to Duke, which went 22-for-25 from the free throw line.
The tide turned in the first two minutes of the second half. Miller, who made his first five shots from the floor, missed on a dunk, of all things. And that was the sliver of an opening Duke needed, as Quinn Cook sank a 3-pointer on the other end to spark a 9-2 Duke run that forced Tech coach Brian Gregory into a timeout two minutes into the second half.
Tech was down by eight, 43-35, after trailing by no more than six in the first half. The Yellow Jackets hung around eight points down until Duke got separation on back-to-back 3-pointers from Hood with 6:31 left.
Parker, who had his second wobbly game in an otherwise stellar freshman season. He picked up his third and fourth fouls in a span of two minutes, and had to sit with 7:53 left in the game, having scored 12 points on 4-of-12 shooting, relatively pedestrian given his 20.4 points per game average.
The Yellow Jackets hadn’t beaten Duke since 2010, Derrick Favors’ freshman year, before dropping the next five. Tech has lost its past seven games at Cameron Indoor Stadium, dating back to a 76-68 win on March 3, 2004.
As rattled as the Yellow Jackets looked Saturday against Maryland, they were that settled on Tuesday. After watching the Terrapins run off with the first four minutes of a blow-out win over Tech on Saturday, the Yellow Jackets showed they’d learned something.
They were that much more prepared and poised, and showed it on plays like Jason Morris cutting through the lane on a nice one-touch pass from Miller for a tomahawk dunk to tie the game 20-20 with 7:30 left in the first half.
After getting blitzed by Maryland behind the 3-point arc, Tech actually outshot Duke from 3-point range in the first half, 3-for-9 compared to Duke’s 2-for-8, and trailed Duke only 34-33 at halftime.
