Pittsburgh Upsets Duke in Cameron Indoor
This past Saturday, January 20th, the Duke Blue Devils welcomed ACC foe, the Pittsburgh Panthers into Durham, NC. Prior to the game, Duke had won eight games in a row, including beating a ranked #10 Baylor Bears squad at a neutral site in Madison Square Garden. Duke relies a lot on its young freshman guards, McDonald’s All-American Jared McCain and Caleb Foster. Not to mention exceptional sophomore athletes, Tyrese Proctor and Kyle Filipowski have been the heart and soul of this young Duke squad. This year’s “Brotherhood” has a real chance at making it deep in the ACC and NCAA tournaments if they can stop losing games they are supposed to win.
This Pitt squad came to play. They grabbed an early 21-10 lead, kickstarted by a two-handed flush from center, Federiko Federiko. Duke would not shy away though. They fought tooth and nail to get back into the game and become as competitive as their young squad could be. Unfortunately for the Blue Devils, every time they seemed to battle back, Blake Hinson was there to answer on the other end. Not even star player, Kyle Filipowski was able to shut him down defensively. Instead, Fliipowski and his cohort turned to the offensive end of the floor to do their damage. Young freshman star Jared McCain put up a team-high 20 points along with Filipowski scoring 19 points in addition. Duke trimmed down the deficit to just one point with 1:10 left to play in regulation, but that wasn’t enough for the comeback. With the sound of the buzzer, Hinson ran over, jumped onto the press table, and started to taunt the Cameron Crazies (as pictured above).
Let’s get down to the intricacies of how this Pittsburgh Panthers squad knocked off the #7 Duke Blue Devils in their own house. This Pitt team starts and ends with the 6’8 230 lb senior from Deltona, FL, Blake Hinson. On the season, Hinson is averaging 18.4 points per game to go along with a 42% 3-point percentage, a four percent increase from last season. It was a collective effort from the Panthers as they had three players score in double-digits. Hinson was two rebounds shy of a double-double, but his game-high 24 points (7/7 from 3-point range) was enough to knock off the Blue Devils in Cameron Indoor for the first time since 1979 with the score being 80-76. Duke falls to 13-4 (4-2) and travels to Louisville in their next ACC matchup in a bounce-back game. Pittsburgh rises to 11-7 (2-5) and is looking to continue to ride the hot hand of Hinson as they travel to Georgia Tech.
