Duke is out of the top 25 and back to the kind of dirty antics that have long made the Blue Devils reviled on most avenues outside of Tobacco Road.
Sophomore guard Grayson Allen blatantly tripped Louisville’s Raymond Spalding to stifle a fast break during Duke’s 72-65 victory in Durham, NC, on Monday night. He was whistled — after a review — for a flagrant-1 foul on the play.
Allen, the surprise hero of last season’s title game win over Wisconsin, also scored 19 points while cementing his reputation as that guy on the under-performing Dukies. It’s a lineage that traces back to Christian Laettner.
“No other black player from any other school is hated as much as a white player from Duke,” former Duke point guard Jay Williams told ESPN. “None.”
But television cameras, dude. We can see you!
Mike Krzyzewski’s unranked club improved to 18-6 (7-4 in the ACC) with the win, and talked up their gritty play without fully endorsing Allen’s trip.
“I just felt like we were tough. Guys wanted the ball. We made winning plays, and we went to the free throw line and we made free throws,” guard Matt Jones said. “Those are signs of toughness. … We knew that we’d been in this position before and we were kind of just drawing off experience.”
The next step? Getting back into the title picture and letting the Grayson Allen enmity really flow.
“We have to be good enough for people to hate him,” Krzyzewski said earlier this season. “I hope we can be. I hope we can get good enough that people hate him.”
With AP