No. 1 Duke beats No. 6 Michigan State 84-79

MSU's Adreian Payne and Durrell Summers foul Duke's Kyle Singler. (Streeter Lecka / Getty Images)

By Shannon Ryan

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke students welcomed Michigan State players to Cameron Indoor Stadium with a sarcastic "aloha" greeting Wednesday night, a less-than-warm reference to the Spartans' recent loss to Connecticut in the Maui Invitational.

It was easy for them to say hello to the Spartans, but Michigan State made it harder to say goodbye.

The No. 6 Spartans lost 84-79 in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge, but they kept charging back against No. 1 Duke.

"If I learned something about my team, we're starting to battle back a little bit," Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. "We had our chances to fold and kept coming back. We showed some grit."
Despite Michigan State's perseverance, the Blue Devils (7-0) knocked off its second ranked opponent just a week after swatting away then-No. 4 Kansas State. Duke so far has shown few reasons to doubt it will defend its NCAA title.

Michigan State (5-2) perhaps thought it met the nation's best guard in Hawaii, when Connecticut's Kemba Walker minced the Spartans with 30 points. They ran into another guinsu knife guard in North Carolina.

Freshman Kyrie Irving, who missed Monday's practice with illness, scored a game-high 31 points with six rebounds, four assists, two blocks and two steals.

"Kyrie was sensational," coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "He was the difference-maker."

Irving outshined MSU guard Kalin Lucas, the preseason Big Ten Player of the Year. Lucas, not yet full throttle from an Achilles' injury last season, scored a quiet 14 points.

Duke led by 12 points midway through the second half after making a flurry of 3-pointers and a spark by Nolan Smith, who finished with 17 points. But Michigan State continued to turn double-digit deficits into a two-possession game several times behind Korie Lucious' 20 points.

Duke converted 20 Spartans' turnovers into 28 points -- an ongoing flaw of Michigan State's.

"This was a big-time game," Krzyzewski said. "We had to fight like crazy to win."

Michigan State, which started the season ranked No. 2, is used to fans jumping off their bandwagon in the early season like passengers on the Titanic.

In previous Big Ten/ACC Challenges, the Spartans trailed by as many as 19 points in a 2009 loss to North Carolina and were just as disastrous in 2008 with a 98-83 loss to the Tar Heels. Both those seasons, they reached the Final Four.

The Spartans hope to later cash in on an impossibly tough nonconference schedule which still has No. 8 Syracuse and No. 19 Texas looming.

"We learned a lot and put it in the bank," Izzo said. "We got beat by a good team. We took more positives away than negatives."

Source: http://www.chicagobreakingsports.com/2010/12/no-1-duke-beats-no-6-michigan-state-84-79.html

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