SYRACUSE, N.Y. _ Duke had to go through some stuff on Saturday that made its 97-88 win difficult to achieve.
Yes, there's been a lot of that going around these days.
Around the ACC, teams up and down the standings are losing players to injury. Around the country, basketball players, coaches and fans mourn Kobe Bryant's sudden death in last Sunday's helicopter crash.
The injuries are part of the game, something the Blue Devils themselves went through when they played six games without freshman guard Wendell Moore while his broken hand healed.
Bryant's stunning death left those who knew him and played with him and cheered for him emotionally raw. Players, coaches and the crowd of 31,458 at the Carrier Dome for Duke's game at Syracuse honored Bryant with a 24-second moment of silence.
Even with all that going on, life dealt Duke even more to handle.
Nolan Smith, the team's director of basketball operations, didn't make the trip to Syracuse. An illness caused his infant daughter to be hospitalized in intensive care back home. So he was missing from the Blue Devils bench at Syracuse.
Duke associate head coach Jon Scheyer was with the team at its gameday shootaround Saturday morning when he began experiencing severe pain in his abdomen and back. Taken to a nearby hospital, he had an emergency appendectomy at 2:15 p.m., less than six hours before the No. 9 Blue Devils game with the Orange.
He, too, was absent from the Blue Devils bench for the game.
Scheyer's task had been putting together Duke's scouting report for Syracuse. Fortunately, the bulk of his work was done by the time he fell ill. Still, the Blue Devils (18-3, 8-2 ACC) were on their own for the game without him.
They found a way to thrive anyway, scoring more points than they had against an ACC opponent since December 2017.
"I'm really proud of our men," Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "This has been a hell of a day for our team."
Duke's performance was sturdy enough to handle it.
Even as the Blue Devils' big men endured foul trouble starting in the first half, they erased Syracuse's early 21-14 lead to take a 40-36 halftime lead of their own.
From there, with 6-10 Vernon Carey on his way to a monster 26-point, 17-rebound game, the Blue Devils led by as many as 15 points in the second half before winning by nine.
"He really went after rebounds and in the zone," Krzyzewski said, "he made some moves against it that were spectacular. He was outstanding tonight and he played hungry. Not that he hasn't before, but he played really hungry tonight and we needed it. This is a big win for us."
The Blue Devils knew Carey could be a big factor. His size and skill in the paint was something the Orange, even with their suffocating 2-3 zone defense, didn't have the personnel to handle.
"We knew he was going to be able to dominate," Duke point guard Tre Jones said. "They don't really have a big to match up with him. Our thing was to have him seal guys down low, continue to bury guys and continue to find him."
That was a good plan as long as Carey was on the court. But he committed his second foul with 9:11 left until halftime.
Senior Javin DeLaurier filled in some and, by scoring eight first-half points of his own, was effective. But he had three fouls of his own in the first half.
Still, the 12 first-half points Carey contributed in 14 minutes of play combined with DeLaurier's eight gave Duke a solid enough inside presence to take that four-point halftime lead.
The Blue Devils found another gear in the second half, when Cassius Stanley scored 15 of his 17 points.
Two baskets each from Carey and Stanley over the first three minutes after halftime allowed Duke to build a 10-point lead.
It grew as large at 71-56 with 9:05 to play before the Blue Devils offense stopped humming and hit a lull. Syracuse started using full-court trapping defense, forcing turnovers and Duke stopped hitting shots.
With 3:06 left, Duke's lead shrunk to 79-74.
That's where the Blue Devils stood firm.
A Cassius Stanley layup and free throw pushed the lead back to eight points.
From there, the Blue Devils didn't commit another turnover and Jones made eight consecutive free throws.
On a tough day, in tough circumstances, Duke had enough to get the win.
"There's no one win that's greater than the other," Stanley said, but especially just because we're missing two coaches right now, that's definitely huge to win this game."
The Blue Devils dealt with all that stuff and won anyway, claiming a win certainly worth savoring.
