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Duke rallies past Miami in overtime

Feb 8, 2009 - 12:28 AM DURHAM, North Carolina (Ticker) -- Gerald Henderson and Duke returned to Cameron Indoor Stadium only to barely recover from their worst loss in nearly two decades.

Henderson scored 18 of his 19 points after halftime and made the go-ahead layup in overtime as the third-ranked Blue Devils rallied for a 78-73 victory over pesky Miami on Saturday afternoon.

"We wanted to come in and make a statement, and when our shots weren't falling in the beginning, I think it kind of knocked us back a little bit," Duke forward David McClure said. "At halftime we really just sat down, no one was really yelling and screaming, and we said to ourselves that we really were going to band together and do it one play at a time as a team."

Jon Scheyer scored 22 points to pace Duke (20-3, 7-2 ACC), which erased a 16-point second-half deficit to improve to 6-0 all-time at home against the Hurricanes (15-8, 4-6).

The Blue Devils got off to a terrible start following Wednesday's 74-47 loss at Clemson, the school's most lopsided defeat since the 103-70 blowout against UNLV in the 1990 NCAA title game.

"How we played the last 22 minutes is more indicative of how we've played this season, but we had to do it after playing our worst you can play, I think, for 63 minutes (at Clemson and the first half today) because it didn't even stop at the start of the second half since we went down by more," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said.

"Then all of a sudden something clicked - we changed some things defensively, tried to give them some different looks, got them out of a little bit of their tempo, and turned them over a few times which produced buckets."

But despite facing a 38-22 deficit three minutes into the second half, Duke fought back to force overtime before holding Miami scoreless through most of the overtime period.

"It's a game where we didn't play well," Greg Paulus said of the loss to Clemson. "It's a reference point for us where we need to learn and get better from it. And that's what we did - we got back to practice the last couple of days and we worked hard. We came out today and showed some character and some fight in the second half."

The Blue Devils took a 66-65 lead on Paulus' 3-pointer with 1:20 left in regulation and appeared headed to the victory when Scheyer sank two free throws 50 seconds later.

But Miami's Jack McClinton drilled a game-tying 3-pointer with 15 seconds left, forging a 68-68 tie and silencing Duke's famed "Cameron Crazies."

"I knew we were down three and I knew there wasn't a lot of time left so I tried to do something to get a little separation," McClinton said. "Step back and shoot the three and it went in, but we didn't come out with the victory so it doesn't have any meaning."

The Blue Devils missed an opportunity to win in regulation when Scheyer bricked a 3-pointer just before the buzzer sounded.

However, the Blue Devils persevered in overtime, jumping out to a six-point lead and holding the Hurricanes without a point until McClinton's 3-pointer with 32 seconds remaining.

Henderson's layup gave Duke the lead for good at 70-68 before Kyle Singler's fast-break layup gave the Blue Devils a four-point lead with 2:12 remaining.

"They started having a lot of success driving against us and when they got in the paint they made plays," Miami coach Frank Haith said. "They did a great job of that."

Paulus finished with 18 points while Singler added 17 and 10 rebounds despite shooting just 5-of-23 from the floor.

"I think these last two days we've been trying to get ourselves right as a team, just think about ourselves and then think about Miami," Scheyer said. "We knew how big of a game this was going into it, and this honestly was probably the biggest game, or one of the biggest games, I've played in at Duke."

McClinton poured in 34 points while James Dews added 14 for the Hurricanes, who were coming off Wednesday's stunning 79-52 blowout of sixth-ranked Wake Forest.