No. 1 Duke overcomes double-digit halftime deficit to avoid massive NCAA tournament upset against No. 16 Siena
Duke needed quite the second-half comeback to avoid one of the biggest upsets in NCAA tournament history on Thursday.
That’s probably not a sentence you expected to read.
The No. 1 overall seed beat No. 16 Siena 71-65 after trailing by 11 points at halftime. It was the first time in NCAA tournament history that a No. 1 seed trailed by 10 points or more to a No. 16 seed at the half and Siena’s 13-point lead in the second half was the biggest deficit Duke had faced all season.
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The Blue Devils, who closed as 28.5-point favorites, finally took a second-half lead with 4:25 to go after slowly chipping away at Siena’s margin. After Cameron Boozer tied the game at 61-61 at the free-throw line with 5:08 remaining, Duke forced a Siena turnover and went up by two on a layup by Isaiah Evans.
It was Duke’s first lead of the game since there were more than 17 minutes to go in the first half. And it’s fair to wonder if the Blue Devils simply wore Siena down in the second half.
Coach Gerry McNamara’s team nearly became the first team since DePaul in the 1979 Final Four to play its starting five all 40 minutes without any substitutions. McNamara didn’t make his first substitution until there were 10 seconds to go.
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If Siena’s starters got tired in the second half — and it’s hard to argue that they didn’t — it was reflected in their shooting stats. The Saints missed multiple shots at the rim in the final 20 minutes and shot less than 25% from the field.
Siena even went over six minutes without scoring down the stretch until a Riley Mulvey putback with 1:06 to go.
But even though Siena had a hard time getting the ball in the basket, the Saints still had a chance with less than a minute to go. Mulvey’s basket cut the Duke lead to four and a Boozer turnover gave Siena an opportunity to cut the lead to one. However, Gavin Doty missed a 3-pointer before Siena was forced to foul out of desperation.
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“[McNamara], he out-coached me, they were ready to play,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said after the game.
At halftime, Duke forward Maliq Brown even said that Duke players figured the game would be a “cakewalk.” Interestingly, Brown played for McNamara for two years at Syracuse when the latter was still an assistant with the program he once starred for.
Duke shot just 41% from the field and was 5-of-26 from behind the 3-point line. Cameron Boozer also had five turnovers as he was 4-of-11 from the field. Boozer scored 13 of his 22 points from the free-throw line.
His twin brother Cayden had 19 points and was 9-of-16 from the field. Cayden Boozer continued his emergence since being inserted into the starting lineup after Caleb Foster’s injury. Foster suffered a fractured right foot in Duke’s regular-season finale against North Carolina.
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The Blue Devils also played Thursday’s game without forward Patrick Ngongba II. He sat out the tournament opener after missing the ACC tournament because of a sore right foot.
Duke will play No. 9 TCU on Saturday in the second round after the Horned Frogs beat No. 8 Ohio State 66-64 to open the first round. TCU won on Xavier Edmonds’ basket with less than five seconds to go.
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