Duke pulls ahead, wins ACC crown

Blue Devils win 23rd league championship in program history

Caleb Foster, left, and Tyrese Proctor celebrate during Saturday night's championship game.

CHARLOTTE – The run was coming, it was just a matter of time.

Duke scored 12 straight points in a decisive second-half run, putting the Blue Devils in the driver’s seat for a 73-62 victory against Louisville in the ACC championship game on Saturday night at Spectrum Center.

The Blue Devils (31-3) captured the program’s 23rd ACC championship, and the second in coach Jon Scheyer’s three seasons after taking over for Mike Krzyzewski. Scheyer is the first coach in the ACC’s history to win two league titles in his first three seasons.

They did so without star freshman Cooper Flagg and defensive wizard Maliq Brown, both of whom were injured in Duke’s first game of the tournament on Thursday.

Louisville (27-7) led by five at halftime and the teams traded buckets for the first few minutes of the second half.

Duke’s 12-0 run started with free throws by Sion James and Patrick Ngongba II. And then James drilled a 3-pointer, followed by Tyrese Proctor’s 3-pointer 32 seconds later on the other side of a timeout by Louisville coach Pat Kelsey.

Kon Knueppel scored a couple of possessions later to cap that game-defining run.

For about a 9-minute span, Louisville’s only two field goals in the second half were on back-to-back possessions around the 10½-minute mark.

The biggest lead of the first half for either team was five points and they both held leads of that size. Duke had a couple of buckets to go up five in the middle portion; Louisville scored the last seven points of the half, though, and led 38-33 at halftime.

The Blue Devils couldn’t figure out how to slow down Terrence Edwards Jr., and Chucky Hepburn was hot early. Hepburn scored Louisville’s first seven points; Edwards had 15 at halftime, including three 3-pointers.

Duke started the same lineup it had for Friday night’s semifinal, with Isaiah Evans replacing Flagg. Evans hit his first two 3-pointers early but went cold after that and finished with six points.

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