CHARLOTTE — No. 1 Duke and Clemson have something in common going into the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament semifinals.
Both teams escaped the quarterfinals with one-point victories to set up Friday night’s meeting.
The scores of both of their games Thursday night were 80-79.
“We’re going to work on keeping this thing going,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said.
Top-seeded Duke (30-2) survived against eighth-seeded Florida State. Fifth-seeded Clemson (24-9) held on against No. 19 and fourth-seeded North Carolina.
“We’re pouring it all out,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. “We’re doing everything we can to win every game.”
The Duke-Clemson winner faces either No. 10 Virginia or Miami in Saturday night’s final.
Duke benefitted from a career-high 32 points from Isaiah Evans to overcome Florida State. Evans is from Charlotte.
“Coach just talked about letting the play come to me, not really trying to press it,” Evans said. “It just ended up working out in my favor. And I’m just blessed to be able to come out for my team and just give us the extra little boost.”
The Blue Devils came back from an eight-point hole in the second half.
“I think it just says that we can win ugly,” star freshman Cameron Boozer said. “Obviously, we don’t want to win ugly, but we can if we have to.”
Duke played without starting guard Caleb Foster and first-string center Patrick Ngongba II. Because of injuries, neither will be in action during the tournament. The Blue Devils used only seven players in their tournament opener.
“It’s March,” Evans said. “So it’s not really time for any excuses.”
The Blue Devils collected 22 offensive rebounds to compensate for some of the glitches.
“We’ve got to step up with the team that we have,” Scheyer said. “We’ve got to figure this out, though. I thought it put us in some tough positions (Thursday) that you can’t really practice, and we’ll learn a lot from it.”
Duke navigated last year’s ACC tournament, which also was contested in Charlotte, to claim the championship without star freshman Cooper Flagg playing in the semifinal or final.
Clemson and Duke met about a month ago, with the Blue Devils capturing a 67-54 home victory. Boozer had 18 points and eight rebounds in that Feb. 14 game.
Clemson will look to improve on its 35.1% shooting from that game. The Tigers are without 6-foot-10 Carter Welling because of a torn knee ligament suffered Wednesday, and he had a team-high 12 points in the first meeting with Duke.
Fresher in Brownell’s mind was how the Tigers managed to knock off North Carolina.
“I’m just glad we had the resolve to figure it out at the end,” he said. “And with our experience in those situations, I think we were able to come out with the win.”
Part of that came from the efforts of Nick Davidson, who supplied 17 points and 11 rebounds. He said without Welling others had to pick up their production.
“I happened to be the one that stepped up, and yeah, willed the team to a win,” Davidson said.
Duke has won its last seven ACC tournament games played in Charlotte.
“We love Charlotte,” Scheyer said. “It has been great to us, and hopefully we can keep that going.”
–Bob Sutton, Field Level Media
