This does not appear to be an opportune time to be playing the Duke Blue Devils, especially on a Saturday evening at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
That, however, is what Georgia Tech is up against at 5 p.m. Saturday when it steps on the court in Durham, North Carolina, for a rematch against a team it upended earlier this season. A little more than a month since the Yellow Jackets opened ACC play with a 72-68 victory over Duke, Saturday’s rematch features two teams headed in different directions.
“I think the task right now, with us losing four in a row, there’s probably a lot of people that think we’re gonna go in there and not get it done,” Tech coach Damon Stoudamire said. “But I truly got a lot of faith in this group of guys. And we’ve responded in the past, so I don’t have no doubt that we’ll respond (Saturday).”
Stoudamire’s team has lost four consecutive, a somewhat surprising turn after an 8-3 start to the season that included a run to the Diamond Head Classic title game in Hawaii. The Jackets (8-7, 1-3 ACC) lost that game to a good Nevada squad – and now haven’t won since.
Tech’s four consecutive losses have been by an average of only 8.5 losses, but they have been losses nonetheless. And the latter three of the four consecutive setbacks have been against conference opponents adding insult to injury as the Jackets have fallen to 1-3 in ACC play.
As a program, Tech is now 12-32 in its past 44 ACC games. It will end January with six games against league opponents who are a combined 66-25 this season.
“You just have to have a next-play mentality,” Tech point guard Nait George said about righting the ship. “Losses come, win streaks come, so we just gotta have a next-play (mentality) and just keep our same energy. We can’t be going down and up like a roller coaster. We have to stay consistent and just keep our heads forward because it’s a next-play, next-game mentality.”
Duke has been a different outfit since leaving Atlanta on Dec. 2, seemingly using the loss at McCamish Pavilion as fuel to play a higher level of ball. The Blue Devils are on a seven-game win streak, and five of those victories have been by at least 20 points.
A 75-53 win at Pittsburgh on Tuesday saw Kyle Filipkowski score 26 points and 10 rebounds for his fifth double-double of the season. The 7-foot center was held to 12 points when Tech beat Duke in December.
Duke now has an NCAA NET ranking of 13 – second best in the ACC – and has become one the league’s top teams in assists per game, shooting percentage, scoring offense and defense, 3-point shooting and turnover margin.
“At some point you knew they were gonna get better,” Stoudamire said. “Obviously we played ‘em early, and you knew they would get better as the season went on. They were new to each other. (Guard Tyrese) Proctor got injured, he’s back, they’re working him back in now. I didn’t expect them this second time around to be the same team that they were the first time around.”
Tech will be making its 44th trip to Cameron Indoor, a building at which it has won only five times and has not left victorious from since March 3, 2004. The Jackets haven’t swept the regular-season series from Duke since 1996.
“First thing first for me going there, we gotta withstand the first four to five minutes,” Stoudamire said. “The second thing is we gotta do a better job of taking away the (3-point shot). I’ve told guys, and I’ve said this to anyone who will listen, 3′s beats you, 2′s don’t. You gotta do a good job of taking away the 3. We gotta do a good job of sprinting back in transition.
“The one thing about Duke that I’ve always said is they’re not trying to trick you. It’s a meat-and-potatoes team, and at the end of the day, it’s gonna end with a ball screen with one of their really good guards and Filipkowski. That’s what you’re looking at.”
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