Duke ends Ball State's run 83-71

AP Basketball Writer

LAHIANA, Hawaii (AP) -- Duke emphatically ended Ball State's run of Top Five upsets.

The top-ranked Blue Devils beat the Cardinals 83-71 Wednesday night, something No. 3 UCLA and No. 4 Kansas couldn't do the previous two days, and won the Maui Invitational for the third time in as many appearances.

"We were just involved in a great basketball game," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "That's the hottest I've ever been in a gym but that great."

Duke's run to the title wasn't without a scare -- the defending national champions just got past Seton Hall 80-79 in the opening round. But the Blue Devils (3-0) never gave Ball State (2-1) a shot at completing what would have been the best three days a team, especially an unranked one from a mid-major conference, ever had.

"I was just glad to be along for the ride," second-year Ball State coach Tim Buckley said. "I was told once that 100 people can handle failure but one in a 100 can handle success. Now we have to see how we handle success."

Unbelievably quick Jason Williams led Duke's defense while still coming up with 22 points. Tournament MVP Mike Dunleavy shook off first-half foul trouble to play his usual all-around game and had 16 points and nine rebounds. Carlos Boozer was a presence in the middle with 13 points and 11 rebounds.

That's how Duke pulled away from the team that had stunned college basketball the last two days.

Ball State beat Kansas 93-91 in the opening round, showing grit in coming back from a late-game deficit to win on a driving basket by Patrick Jackson with less than a second to play.

The Cardinals had only three turnovers in their 91-73 win over UCLA in the semifinals. They had that many in the opening three minutes against Duke and finished the first half with 12.

Jackson led the Cardinals in the final with 21 points, while Chris Williams added 17.

"Mike and Jason gave us great leadership and I thought our defense, especially Jason, was excellent," Krzyzewski said. "We just played really well."

The murmurs of the upset-minded sellout crowd of 2,500 in the steamy Lahaina Civic Center started to get louder when the Cardinals went on a 17-2 run to take a 21-12 lead with 11:48 left.

Adding No. 1 to Nos. 3 and 4 was no longer a wild dream to cap an unthinkable opening tournament.

Duke missed 10 of 11 shots during the run and Ball State was hitting everything, including four 3-pointers.

Jackson hit consecutive jumpers to keep the lead at nine, 27-18, with 9:42 to play.

Then came Duke.

As Ball State failed to score on four straight possessions, Chris Duhon scored on a drive, Boozer had a three-point play, Dunleavy made two free throws and Williams made a driving layup after Casey Sanders blocked a shot by Matt McCollum.

Duke was within one point.

The Blue Devils took the lead for good at 34-33 as Boozer dunked on a give-and-go with Williams with 4:55 left. Williams scored eight points over the final 4:14 of the half and Ball State scored on one of its last six possessions of the half as Duke took a 49-39 lead.

"Jason made some courageous plays at the end of the first half, just throwing himself into it," Krzyzewski said. "I get so excited to be coaching a player like him."

Dunleavy took over at the start of the second half. The 6-foot-9 junior forward scored the first eight points of Duke's 15-2 run to open the half. Duke was so in control that Buckley called two timeouts in the first three minutes. Duhon capped the run with a 3-pointer that made it 64-41 with 15:12 to play.

"Since I've been here we've always seemed to start a little slow then come on," Dunleavy said. "The last 10 minutes of the first half we came out of it and then found our niche."

Ball State made one last run, though, and the Cardinals got within 76-66 with 1:37 left as Theron Smith and Jackson hit consecutive 3s, but Duke went 7-for-8 from the free throw line over the final 1:04.

"I told the kids at halftime we had played 100 minutes here and only three were bad," Buckley said. "We had to come out big for the second half and we didn't right away but we came back and that says a lot about our character."

Duke is 9-0 in the tournament sponsored by EA Sports, having won it in 1992 and 1997.

The only comparable runs unranked teams had at the start of a season were Kansas in 1989, when the Jayhawks beat No. 1 UNLV, No. 2 Duke and No. 25 St. John's to win the Preseason NIT, and Arizona this year, when the Wildcats beat No. 2 Maryland and No. 6 Florida in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic and then won at No. 23 Texas.

Kansas moved into the next poll that season at No. 5 and Arizona went in this week at No. 8. Ball State will find out where its run got it on Monday.

Jackson didn't want to talk about rankings, leaving that topic for others to handle.

"We feel good but we're still disappointed," he said. "We felt we could beat Duke and we approached them like we would any other team, just like we did against Kansas and UCLA."