NEW YORK – On the seventh night in a row, Duke didn’t give Coach K a send-off victory.
This time it’s Virginia Technology play party pooper.
Cattoor Hunter scored a career-high 31, and the seventh-seeded Hokies won the Atlantic Coast Conference for the first time, beating Duke 82-67 to deny Mike Krzyzewski the title in his final season.
Virginia Tech (December 23) arrives in Brooklyn in need of a run in time for the NCAA, and is then considering a knockout on Wednesday when Darius Maddox hit a 3-pointer ahead on the whistle to beat Clemson in extra time.
Virginia Tech coach Mike Young said the Hokies were “luckier than hell” after that game.
After defeating Duke, how does it feel?
“Very happy,” Young said.
The Hokies became only the second ACC team to claim the crown with four wins in four days and the lowest-seeded team to win the most tiered conference tournament in college basketball.
They are also the fourth ACC champion to win the title, beating the top three seeds.
The Hokies will receive automatic bids for the NCAA tournament for the first time in 43 years, tied for the fourth-longest period between auto bids in Division I history, according to research from ESPN Stats & Information. Virginia Tech’s last – and only – conference tournament championship came in 1979, when the Hokies attended the Metro Convention.
Duke lost Coach K’s final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium to rival North Carolina a week ago, derailed in celebration of the coach’s victory in Division I men’s college basketball.
Top seed and seventh place Blue Devils (28-6) have one more chance for a comfortable win and at least one more title for the retired Hall of Famer’s case. Again it was not like that.
“I always tell them, ‘Don’t worry about me,'” Krzyzewski says. “Even in moments of failure, I want to be there with them. How do we use it? How do we become better?
He added: “Last weekend the whole word was about [my retirement]. So it was a very difficult weekend. What we were trying to do was remove everything. These are young men. I love coaching them. I think we can be good in [NCAA] Tournaments. I was really active with them after that. “
When Justyn Mutts perform a two-handed hit on Duke’s star freshman Paolo Banchero with 2:26 remaining in the second half, Virginia Tech led 76-64 and the fanbase outnumbered the Hokies who surged to cheers.
“The next dead ball, we go to the meeting and it’s like, ‘We can taste it. We can taste it now,'” the opinion defender Hurricane Murphy speak.
Virginia Tech’s first ACC championship since entering the 2004 convention has been sealed.
Soon after, Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” the Hokies’ unofficial fight anthem, rang throughout the Barclays Center, and Virginia Tech fans sang along as if it were the fourth inning at Lane Stadium. in Blacksburg, Virginia. The 15-point win was the Hokies’ biggest win over Duke in a series first held in 1912, according to research by ESPN Stats & Information.
Banchero scored 20 points for Duke, shot 4 20 points from 3 points and allowed the Hokies to take 50% of their shots.
Young led his teams to five Southern Conference championships in 17 seasons at Wofford. It took him just three seasons to get his first to Virginia Tech, and he did it with a roster full of boys he recruited to play at his alma mater.
Murphy and Keve Aluma (19 points, 10 rebounds and 7 assists) were all transfers from Wofford and Cattoor was prepared to leave high school before Young took the Virginia Tech job.
Meanwhile, Krzyzewski was denied his 16th ACC title in his 42nd season.
Barclays Center has a long way to go against Cameron, literally and figuratively, but Duke fans have gone to great lengths to make it feel like a home game for the Blues.
However, nothing has come easy for Duke this week in Brooklyn.
Duke didn’t take the lead in any of the games at Barclays Center.
On Saturday night, down three innings, Duke started the second half with a sloppy foul and then conceded a spin.
Krzyzewski called a 35-second timeout and lay on his team, getting out of his chair to show the movement he wanted to see from his players.
The scolding did not have the desired result. Cattoor hit his sixth 3 and then did a steal on the other end which he turned into an old fashioned three point game with a driving game.
That put the Hokies to 55-45 less than five minutes into the first half.
Duke wasn’t in a hurry, but whenever the Blue Devils put pressure on, the Hokies responded.
“I know when it comes together it’s going to be a beautiful thing and they come together,” Young said of the Hokies, who took down 13-2 in the ACC match to play their way. “I don’t think it’s going to peak, but we’re not giving it back.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
