ATLANTA— NCAA rules dictate a 40-minute game, so Carolina went along with it.
But as far as the devastated Tar Heels and jubilant Blue Devils were concerned, Sunday’s title game of the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament lasted 4 minutes, 38 seconds.
Duke cruised to a 79-53 win Sunday, the second largest margin of victory ever in the tournament, thanks to a 19-1 run late in the first half.
“That just broke the game open,”Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “It gave us energy and picked up our defense even more.”
The run started, as always for Duke, with the 3, although the defense wasn’t far behind.
Shane Battier and Nate James got open from the same spot in the right corner, on consecutive possessions, and drained both bombs for a 29-20 lead with 8:23 to play in the first half.
Tar Heel head coach Matt Doherty, sensing disaster, called for time to set up a play to stem Duke’s momentum. Point guard Ronald Curry quickly walked into a trap at halfcourt and JasonWilliams picked off Curry’s pass and slammed home the steal.
“Usually coaches call a timeout to calm their players down and try to put the fire out on the other side,”said Duke guard Chris
Duhon, part of the trap. “We just kept our fire burning higher and higher.”
Williams added fuel, faking Curry out of his shoes for a finger roll, then swiping another ball at the other end and feeding Chris Duhon for a fast-break finger roll.
“We kicked it around and they ended up getting easy shots,”Doherty said. “They trapped a little bit and we didn’t handle it real well.”
Carolina guard Joseph Forte, who had UNC’s last field goal at the 9:03 mark, missed a 3-pointer and Williams got the rebound and sent a long pass ahead to Casey Sanders, who stopped, put up a layup and got fouled by Julius Peppers.
Doherty, kneeling on the sideline, dropped his head and stared at the floor. A television timeout at the 6:09 mark saved him from burning one of his own as the lead stretched to 37-21.
The Tar Heels trudged to the sideline. The Blue Devils practically floated to theirs.
“It was like, ‘Hey, we’re going to do this,’ ” Williams said. “We got so many steals, turnovers and loose balls. The score was close, then the score wasn’t even close at all.”
It was about to get worse. Battier drained another 3-pointer, then grabbed a steal and fed Williams for a fast-break layup to force another Carolina timeout.
The BlueDevils led 42-21. Carolina had missed its last eight shots and turned the ball over three times.
“We just turned up the pressure another notch and started hitting shots,”Duhon said. “They got exhausted. You could see it in their eyes.”
“We kept running them,”Williams added with an evil grin. “We like to run. We don’t get tired.”
Duke enjoyed another run, albeit on a much smaller scale, in Saturday’s semifinal game against Maryland. But the Devils failed to put away the
Terps, and hung on for an 84-82 win.
It was something they hadn’t forgotten.
“Maryland kept fighting and I think we let up a little bit,”Duhon said. “We were just happy to be in that position. Today we weren’t happy with where we were at. We got hungrier. Instead of letting them get back in the game, we went for the jugular.”
The Tar Heels showed a few sparks of life afterward. But not many. And certainly not enough to counteract the devastating run.
“They’re a hard team to come back on,”Haywood said. “You’ve got to do it a few small things at a time, but they came out and scored the first five points after halftime.
Carolina never got closer than the 20-point halftime margin, even after Williams went out with a sprained ankle.
“The run was the most critical thing that happened in the game,”Tar Heel center Brendan Haywood said. “Had it not been such a big run, we could’ve cut it down, especially without Jason Williams, but it was too big to overcome.”
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Sportswriter Steve Hanf covered the ACC Tournament for the Post.
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