Associated Press
NEW YORK ó Southern Illinois coach Chris Lowery warned his team before playing Duke that Gerald Henderson was due for a breakout performance.
Evidently, Lowery didn’t remind his guys at halftime.
The Blue Devils’ under-appreciated forward scored all 20 of his points after the break, helping No. 10 Duke find some offensive rhythm in an 83-58 victory over the Salukis on Thursday night in the semifinals of the 2K Sports Classic.
“It was his time to have a big night,” Lowery said. “He had monster dunks and played at the rim and got wide-open shots and hit wide-open 3s.”
Jon Scheyer and Kyle Singler each added 13 points for the Blue Devils (4-0), who overcame 15 first-half turnovers and advanced to play on Friday night for the championship of the tournament benefiting Coaches vs. Cancer.
Carlton Fay had 17 points to lead Southern Illinois (2-1), which spent most of the game in foul trouble. Big man Nick Evans fouled out with 7:59 left, Tony Boyle was gone with just under 7 minutes to go and the Blue Devils wound up shooting 47 free throws.
“We should shoot a good number of free throws if we don’t turn the damn thing over, because we have fresh guys who like to drive and keep pretty good spacing,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said.
The Salukis made things much more difficult than the final score might indicate. They pulled to 55-47 with about 91/2 minutes left before Singler hit a 3-pointer. A couple of minutes later, Duke’s stellar sophomore was fouled on a breakaway dunk and crashed to the floor in a heap.
A referee came from the other end of the court to call an intentional foul on Boyle, even though it appeared the Southern Illinois forward was going for the ball. After Singler made a pair of free throws, Henderson nailed a 3 from the wing to give Duke a 66-49 lead.
Henderson scored seven more in just a couple of minutes, including a thunderous dunk that roused a late-arriving crowd and pushed the game out of reach.
“They play real aggressive defense, so you can’t just run the play, because they’re going to be there,” said Henderson, who instead waited for skip passes over the defense and got a number of open looks. “I was fortunate to hit some shots.”
Brian Zoubek added 10 points for Duke. Kevin Dillard had 10 for Southern Illinois.
The Salukis did their best to slow down the high-scoring Blue Devils, often pushing and grabbing them as they cut through the lane. A shoving match on an inbounds play early in the game resulted in double fouls, prompting Krzyzewski to yell at one referee: “That’s how they want to play all game!”
Somebody must have paid attention. The Blue Devils spent the final 9 minutes of the half parading to the free-throw line, where they had just as many tries (19) as field-goal attempts.
“That killed us,” Lowery said. “We felt we had a good game plan going in, we just didn’t expect to be in that kind of foul trouble.”
Slow starts have become something of a trend for Duke, which fell behind by 12 early and trailed most of the way before squeaking by Rhode Island last Sunday.