Duke head coach Jon Scheyer discusses hard fought first half vs. Virginia

The Duke Blue Devils and Virginia Cavaliers were battling it out in the first half in Charlottesville, Virginia. Duke led the game 27-25 at halftime, thanks in large part to a huge first half from their star point guard, Jeremy Roach. He pumped in 12 points in the first half alone.

Heading into the locker room, Duke head coach Jon Scheyer discussed the hard-fought first half against Virginia.

Jon Scheyer was overall pretty pleased with Duke’s performance

First, he talked about his team’s toughness in the first half. “Yeah, we’ve been tough. We just can’t give them layups. But we’ve been tough. We played a good half. We need to regroup and get ready for the second half,” Scheyer said.

He then discussed the things he wants to clean up offensively. “You know offense was pretty good. We had some good shots. Just converting those easy opportunities when you get in transition. They do a great job coming over to help. We have to seek kicks and just make the right play. We’ve done a really good job overall. But we can be better with that,” Scheyer said.

Virginia was 0-for-5 from three-point range in the first half. The Blue Devils had a tough time stopping the Cavaliers in the painted area in the first half and did allow numerous easy layups. Saturday’s game is the first game returning from injury for Duke freshman Dariq Whitehead. He drained two big three-pointers in the second half to put the Blue Devils up 47-42 with 11:29 remaining in the game.

Whitehead was one of the most highly rated players in the country coming out of Montverde Academy (Montverde, Florida). He was ranked as the No. 1 small forward in America and the No. 2 overall prospect in the country, according to the On3 Consensus Rankings for the 2022 cycle.