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Hustle lifts Duke to win March 22: Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski says his team's big plays down the stretch were the difference against Texas.

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Duke led 64-54 with 7 minutes remaining before Abrams and Varez Ward willed the Longhorns back into the game by keying a 13-3 run. Abrams reeled off five straight points, and Ward finished the spurt with eight in a row for Texas, tying it at 67-all by hitting a jumper over Williams with 1:44 remaining.

Ward, a freshman, scored a season-high 16 points in his second double-figure game of the year and James finished with 15 points. But Abrams was shadowed all night by Scheyer — who, at 6-foot-5, is 6 inches taller than the Texas sharpshooter — and seemed to have trouble getting open looks.

“I had to take some tough shots early on,” Abrams said. “But as a group, I don’t think they did anything special to stop me.”

Texas has been beaten in the second round twice in three years, and the Longhorns became the second Big 12 team eliminated from the tournament. The conference finished the first round 6-0.

Meanwhile, Duke — one of only two ACC teams still playing — is headed back to some familiar territory.

Reaching the round of 16 never used to be a reason to celebrate after the Blue Devils made it at least that far every year from 1998-2006. But after they followed their first-round exit in 2007 with an equally surprising second-round loss last year, reaching the tournament’s second weekend seemed to become a higher priority.

“Our standards have been so high, because in the past we’ve had teams that won,” Henderson said. “Trying to uphold that standard, you know, we’re not really going to worry as much about what people think. The biggest thing is just to win.”

The weekend was a homecoming of sorts for Barnes, who grew up a 90-minute drive away in Hickory, once interviewed for a job on Krzyzewski’s staff and spent four seasons at Clemson. His first victory against the Blue Devils came in 1995 — the last game Krzyzewski coached before he took a leave of absence for the remainder of that season to have back surgery.

This time, after Duke improved to 4-0 against Texas, it was Coach K who was the one sending Barnes into some extended time off — he’s got the entire offseason to dwell on this defeat.

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Mark J. Terrill / AP

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