The college basketball world saw the Duke Blue Devils come up short against the Kansas Jayhawks on Tuesday night, an effort doomed by a turnover in the final five seconds. Head coach Jon Scheyer saw his team battle back from a nightmare start.
The Blue Devils dropped into a quick 16-3 hole when the Jayhawks made six of their first seven shots, including a trio of 3-pointers, in the opening four minutes. Despite facing a mountain from the opening bell, however, Duke scratched and clawed to hang around before rattling off a 16-4 run of its own to tie the game with 3:34 left until halftime.
“It would have been easy to fold in that kind of game,” Scheyer said. “We just kept fighting and kept fighting… I thought the character and the heart of our team really showed tonight.”
Veterans Maliq Brown and Tyrese Proctor really engineered the first-half comeback. The duo combined for 16 points after making five of their six shots, including three 3-pointers from Proctor. Brown also tallied three steals before the midway point.
“To me, it’s character,” Scheyer said. “It’s either you have a competitive spirit or you don’t…I think it says a lot about our group that we just kept fighting.”