Photo credit: Rob Kinnan-USA TODAY Sports
Jon Scheyer Apologizes to Duke Basketball Fans for Allowing Pitt Party
Saturday night's 80-76 defeat at the hands of Duke basketball alum Jeff Capel's unranked Pitt Panthers (11-7, 2-5 ACC) marked the Blue Devils' first ACC home loss under Jon Scheyer. It was only the second sour ending in Cameron Indoor Stadium overall across his two seasons at the helm.
His first Duke squad finished 16-0 in Durham. This year's Blue Devils (13-4, 4-2 ACC), now likely to drop from No. 7 to outside the top 10 in Monday's new Associated Press Top 25 Poll, fell to No. 12 Arizona, 78-73, in the second game of the season.
That early November loss to the Wildcats was disappointing given all the fanfare leading up to it, but the Blue Devils presented encouraging signs in the high-level battle.
As for Saturday night's loss to the Panthers, it came with legitimate excuses, as Duke was without two starters in Jeremy Roach and Mark Mitchell due to their knee injuries. However, it was to a team that the Blue Devils beat by 22 points on the road only 11 days prior.
And Pitt standout Blake Hinson rubbed it in via his unapologetically up-close celebration. When the clock ticked zero, the 24-year-old forward, who shot 7-for-7 from deep and let the Cameron Crazies hear all about it en route to his game-high 24 points, jumped on the courtside press table to confront the famed student section.
Had the security guard not rushed over to demand he step back down, there's no telling how long he would have stood up there to enthusiastically wave goodbye.
Here's the video that Blue Devil Country on SI.com captured of Hinson while the Panthers' bench players stormed Coach K Court to fully soak up what will surely go down as one of Pitt's all-time most memorable victories:
The experience, clearly shocking to the defeated Crazies, seemed to also leave an unshakeable bad taste in Scheyer's mouth, which he later conveyed in his opening statement to the media and again at the end of his presser:
"I want to apologize to our fans...What happened at the end, that can't happen. That's on us. And that's unacceptable. So, for us, we have to watch the game, learn from it, move on quickly — we go on the road in a day and a half — and learn from it, because that's not OK with me what happened tonight...
"Again, I just want to apologize to our fans one more time. That was not OK at the end. That's on us. We're gonna fix it. We're gonna get better. Our crowd's been terrific. Keep going that way. Keep supporting these guys. And we'll get back to it tomorrow."
NEXT DUKE BASKETBALL GAME: at unranked Louisville, 7 p.m. ET Tuesday (ACCN)
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