Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 17, 1990 TAG: 9003172121
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Long
Abdelnaby came off the bench for the first time in Duke's basketball season and used his size 15 high-tops to squash the Spiders 81-46 in the first-round opener of the NCAA Tournament East Region at the Omni.
The 6-foot-10 Abdelnaby played in a different stratosphere than the Spiders, who start a pair of 6-5 post players. This game was over when the pairings were announced Sunday.
"We were embarrassed," said Dick Tarrant, Richmond's coach. "We played hard, but not very well. Duke is too big, too talented, too deep. We didn't belong on the same floor with them today.
"Their second team probably would have beaten us."
The Blue Devils' bench scored 41 of 81 points, led by Abdelnaby's 22. He also had 12 rebounds and three blocked shots in 22 minutes.
It was the worst loss in Tarrant's nine years as the Spiders' coach, eclipsing the 77-43 "Midnight Massacre" in February at James Madison.
The 15th-ranked Blue Devils (25-8) advanced to Sunday's second-round game against St. John's (24-9) at noon.
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski told Abdelnaby he hadn't played well in the Blue Devils' ACC Tournament semifinal loss to Georgia Tech. If there ever was a game Krzyzewski could sit out a big man, this was it.
Duke blistered the smaller Spiders in transition, and the Blue Devils' defense cut off Richmond's passing lanes. The Spiders, who got here by upsetting James Madison in the Colonial Athletic Association Tournament final, exacerbated their shortness by shooting 31.3 percent.
"Alaa had played well all season," Krzyzewski said, "but we thought we could go with a smaller team, and we wanted to take a look at it. If I were dissatisfied with Alaa's play, he wouldn't have played.
"He was in there after three minutes. The idea we went in with was to play nine people in a rotation and, as long as we were giving them difficulty, we were going to stick with it."
The Blue Devils' Egyptian-born center scored at will. Duke's guards simply lobbed the ball over the undersized Spiders into the low post. When Duke missed, Abdelnaby played catch off the glass.
"We knew we could dump it down low and get points," Abdelnaby said. "I knew I was going to play. It didn't bother me not to start. If I knew I wasn't going to play, then it would bother me."
Duke's swarming man-to-man defense frustrated the Spiders (22-10), who needed scoring and accuracy from their guards to succeed. Senior Ken Atkinson and sophomore Curtis Blair of Roanoke combined for an 8-of-28 shooting day.
"It was a liberally officiated game, a different game," Atkinson said. "Maybe it was officiated well, but it's not the kind of game we're used to in the CAA. It's a totally different game. The bumping, the contact, no way we're used to that."
Blair, who was 3-of-14, said Duke "was the kind of team that's even better in person than when you see them on TV."
"We didn't have the size to stay with them. It's that simple," Blair said. "We had to shoot 60 percent to stay in it, and we did about half of that."
Krzyzewski lauded the defense freshman point guard Bobby Hurley played on Atkinson, who led Richmond with 12 points.
Richmond had hoped to continue its first-round NCAA success of the 1980s against the Blue Devils, but the 14th-seeded Spiders unraveled in a six-minute span in which they scored one field goal.
Abdelnaby already was dominating when Duke roared from a 15-10 lead to a 28-12 lead 13 minutes into the game. Tarrant kept shuffling his inexperienced big men, but, as basketball coaches love to say, you can't coach height.
"We weren't going to attack the board, because we knew they'd run off everything," said Tarrant, whose program made its sixth postseason appearance in seven years. "Maybe Alaa was ticked off he didn't start.
"That kind of surprised us. We can't play a guy like that. I took a glance at his halftime stats [13 points in 13 minutes] and just shuddered."
In the second half, it got worse, as Richmond shot 28 percent.
Duke's other big man, Christian Laettner, finished with just seven points. RICHMOND MPFGFTRAFPT Stapleton 385-130-175410Wood 271-60-01032Connolly 214-91-23149Atkinson 325-141-283112Blair 273-140-03237Springer 170-60-03020Bryant 80-10-01110Shields 50-00-02010Weathers 192-30-02214Muldowney 20-00-10010McDonald 21-10-00002Johnson 20-00-00010Totals 20021-672-630142246 DUKE MPFGFTRAFPT Brickey 223-50-05036Koubek 112-30-03024Laettner 281-45-67417Henderson 277-143-535019Hurley 352-30-04614Hill 213-60-02336Abdelnaby 229-144-5121122McCaffrey 132-60-11104Davis 72-22-40106Palmer 60-02-22012Buckley 40-00-01000Cook 40-11-20011Totals 20031-5817-2546211381 Rebounds include team rebounds Score by periods: Richmond 26-20-46 Duke 42-39-81
Three-point goals - Richmond: Wood 0-1, Connolly 0-1, Atkinson 1-2, Blair 1-4, Totals 2-8. Duke: Henderson 2-5, Hurley 0-1, Totals 2-6.
Turnovers - Richmond 17 (Blair 4); Duke 15 (Hurley 4). Blocked shots - Richmond 2 (Stapleton, Connolly); Duke 6 (Brickey, Abdelnaby 3). Steals - Richmond 8 (Connolly, Atkinson, Blair 2); Duke 13 (Henderson 6).
Technical fouls - Abdelnaby. Officials - Zetcher, Freund, McGrath. Attendance - NA.
by CNB