Longtime Duke men’s basketball public address announcer Art Chandler passed away at Hock Family Pavilion on Christmas Day at the age of 78. Known as the “Voice of Cameron Indoor Stadium” for 40 years, Chandler retired from the position at the close of the 2009-10 season.

Chandler left a lasting impression on the Duke fan base as well as his signature introduction of “Here Comes Duke!”, which he began using years ago at the suggestion of former Blue Devil Alaa Abdelnaby. Chandler manned his first game behind the microphone in 1970 went on to inform thousands who scored, who fouled, and who subbed in over 600 games. During his four decades at the scorers table, Chandler saw four national championship teams, 12 ACC Tournament champs and a plethora of All-Americas.

“Art Chandler was a great friend of the program,” said head coach Mike Krzyzewski. “He not only helped out at Duke but was also active with his military service. Art went out of his way to help mankind and I greatly respected that about him. He did a terrific job in his role and his service to the Athletic Department, specifically the basketball program for 40 years was greatly appreciated. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family. He will be missed.”

– News release

Duke’s Quinn Cook has been selected ACC Rookie of the Week.

Cook scored a career-high 14 points in Monday’s 90-63 win over UNC Greensboro. After a scoreless first half, the Bowie, Md., freshman guard went 6-of-6 from the field (1.000) with a pair of three-pointers in the second half. Cook added two assists and one steal in only 18 minutes of action for the fifth-ranked Blue Devils.

Duke lost another close one last Saturday, this time to Georgia Tech by a 38-31 score. A win at North Carolina this Saturday would be a big confidence boost going into next season.

“It’s obviously been a frustrating season for our squad, particularly for our seniors because we’ve played so many close games that we haven’t been able to win,” Duke coach David Cutcliffe said. “I think it obviously helps when you’re playing a rival team, but certainly our preparation is going to be critical playing a team as talented as North Carolina, and hopefully we get a few people back that have been injured.

QUESTION: You alluded to so many close games that you’ve been in this year that haven’t gone your way. Could winning a game like this to end the season be a springboard towards better things for next season?

COACH CUTCLIFFE: Well, there’s no doubt. I think your last game of the year, whether it’s a bowl game, which is what I’m more used to, but our last regular season game, the last game of the year, that taste is going to stay in your mouth.
Certainly it would be a great gift to our returning players, but certainly in my mind right now more importantly it would be a great way to send a small, but great group of seniors off. They have worked very hard, and it would be nice to see that occur. We’ve got a lot of work in the front office, but yes would be the answer.

After Duke’s loss at Virginia, Blue Devil coach David Cutcliffe told Cavaliers coach Mike London that he wasn’t happy with the Cavaliers’ Chase Minnifield.

He said to London, and you can take a look below, “First, congratulations, but in my 38 years of coaching, I’ve never been more insulted than I was by number 13.” London replied, “I’ll take care of that coach.”

During Wednesday’s news conference, reporters asked him about the exchange.

QUESTION: Hoping to put this issue behind you. Has there been any dialogue with you and Mike London or anybody else from Virginia about some of the hard feelings that existed at the end of the game the other day?

COACH CUTCLIFFE: I don’t know of any hard feelings that existed, so I can’t comment to that.

QUESTION: You were not upset with Virginia after the game?

COACH CUTCLIFFE: Who said that? Who said that?

QUESTION: There’s a TV feed of your discussion with Coach London after the game where you said you’d been insulted by No. 13.

COACH CUTCLIFFE: No comment.

Things don’t get any easier for Duke this week as the Devils play Virginia, in a game many at the first of the season thought Duke would be favored.

“We have a huge challenge playing arguably the hottest team in the Atlantic Coast Conference in Virginia,” Duke coach David Cutcliffe said. “They’re winning football games like you’re supposed to win them. They’re running the football, playing great defense, playing great in the kicking game.

“When a team’s playing that solidly and soundly, it’s very difficult to beat them. So a huge challenge. Biggest challenge we face is obviously us playing better than we played a week ago. Hopefully we will take that challenge or we will have a long day in Charlottesville if we don’t.”

Q. Yesterday you told us y’all had a really physical practice Tuesday morning. You said there would be another one Wednesday. You explained to us why you thought you needed to do that. Did you come out of it okay physically in terms of not banging anybody up?
COACH CUTCLIFFE: Yes. We have not had an issue at practice. As I said earlier in the week, a little tougher in the ballgame than we had hoped. But we have not reinjured anybody, to answer your question. It’s been great work, work that we needed. We’ve dodged that bullet at this point.

Q. When you look at your young defensive front, you were really happy with the way they played against Virginia Tech. It looked like they got manhandled against Miami. Can you address the ups and downs. Was that a function of youth or something else going on?
COACH CUTCLIFFE: Part of it is matchups. It was a little tougher matchup in two or three slots for us down there. The other part of it is that it is a function of youth to be inconsistent. Without the work, without keeping it on point as well as we were able to, we had a lot of them beat up. They didn’t get the technique and formal work we would like to give them for a couple weeks. It took its toll. We weren’t given a choice but to go back to a little spring practice atmosphere. I know it’s helped us and hope it will help us on Saturday.

Q. Coach, Michael Rocco, the UVA quarterback, as you’re getting ready for this game, studying tape from game one all the way up to now, are you seeing a different quarterback? What is your analysis of what his maturation is? Are you seeing that as well?
COACH CUTCLIFFE: I think he’s a talented player, for one thing. He’s got a nice arm. He’s got good vision, good feet, all the things you need to be successful. When you’re running the football as well as they’re running it, a quarterback can play smart and mature and grow. He’s taken advantage of that. He has taken care of the ball better, picking his spots. He has become a much better third-down quarterback.
The more you play at this level, if you got talent, the better you’re going to get. He’s got talent and you see it happening.

Q. You’ve been able to win the last three against UVA. Is there something you guys are consistently doing against Virginia football allowing you to come out on top?
COACH CUTCLIFFE: No, not really. There are other teams in our league that if we would have played a little better in those particular games, we might have won all three of those games against those opponents. We’ve had two really close games against Virginia that fell our way, and probably more than anything else just a little luck of the draw. It just happens sometimes. But I’m not a big believer in one season to the next or any circumstance like that playing in a ballgame. As a player, I never thought about that. As a coach, you don’t ever think about that during the heat of a ballgame at all.

Q. David, last week there was a lot of talk about Virginia becoming bowl-eligible, of Maryland having to win out to become bowl-eligible. It’s now mentioned you have to win out to become bowl-eligible. Do coaches give any thought at all to becoming bowl-eligible?
COACH CUTCLIFFE: Sure. I think it’s got to be one of the goals of your program when you’re in a BCS conference. Everybody hollers for a tournament all the time. You’re watching it. We’re in a playoff system. Got a lot of big games all year long. In November, the stakes get higher. All of us want that opportunity for our players. Particularly when you’re in my shoes here, I’ve been so fortunate in my career to have been a part of so many bowl games, I would love for these great young men we have to experience it sooner than later.
So, yeah, I think we all do pay attention to it.

Q. Last year (Brandon) Connette, your backup quarterback, did some good things against Virginia. Is he being redshirted or is he just behind at this point?
COACH CUTCLIFFE: He’s injured and out for the season. He had a major shoulder separation. Just has not been able to make it back. So he played very little at the beginning of the year. Obviously our hope would be with him being unable to play the rest of the season that he may get the year back and serve as a redshirt year. That’s what I would hope would occur.

Q. Coach, mentioning Donovan, what has he meant to the program in the four years since he started there, the kinds of things that he has added to what you’re trying to build?
COACH CUTCLIFFE: Well, the first thing is his durability. He brings it every practice, every game. I don’t even know what he weighs, 170 pounds. He is just a physical warrior as well as a great speed guy. It’s just every day. You look for Donovan – I’ve thought about this already – you look for Donovan in practice to create energy and excitement. He loves to compete. Every game, you just heard the statistic, he’s there every game catching balls, making conversions on third down. He’s really quite a special young player.
There’s been a lot of great small players all through different eras of college football. He is very much one of the fine small players of this era of college football because he has been so consistent as a true sophomore. He led the ACC in receptions. He’s continued to play well, particularly as we spread the ball around, have better players around him, he has still remained a big factor in our offense.

“This was a really good game for us. [Head coach] Cleo [Hill Jr.] does a great job with his team,” Duke Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski said in an opening statement following the Blue Devils’ 80-66 win over Shaw. “That pair of guards is really good – [Malik] Alvin and [Antonio] Smith. They could play for a lot of teams in Division. I. They’re older, experienced, can really handle the ball. I think they’ll be really good in their league. I thought we did a much better job on them in the last 24 minutes of the game.

“Our ball-screen defense became very good. Our big guys stepped in aggressively, made an adjustment on our ball-screen defense. I thought Austin [Rivers] really played Smith well in that second half. I think Smith’s good, really good, and Austin, for a freshman, is wanting to play defense. He’s supposed to be this great scorer. I thought it was a big half for Austin. I thought we left a lot of points on the floor with our free-throw shooting and our inside play. It was good, but we’ve got to complete more plays.

“I thought they played well and I thought we played better than the score, whereas against Bellarmine I don’t think we played as well as the score. I thought we played much better tonight than we did against Bellarmine, even though we didn’t hit shots. The fact that we did get to the line and we did get the ball inside – those are good things. Now we have to hit when we’re on the line and we have to hit inside. We played a lot of guys. So overall I thought it was a good night for us against a very well-coached team with two outstanding guards. If you have good guards, you’re going to give people some problems because you can control the tempo of the game.”

On the play of freshman Austin Rivers:
“I thought he played like a very mature player tonight. I was very impressed with his game. He took what was there offensively and instead of saving his energy on defense, he used his energy on defense. That’s a big growing-up game for him.”

On the roles of his players on offense:
“Seth [Curry]’s got to be our point guard. He and Miles [Plumlee] are our two key guys who have to play a little bit better. They didn’t play poorly tonight, but they’ve got to play a little bit better. They have to have more of an impact on the game. We started Tyler [Thornton] primarily for defense, not for ball handling. So we still want Seth to be out on top, but if Tyler got the ball and brought it up, then you can move Seth up. But I want Seth bringing it up most of the time. Seth can do that. He’ll be more effective doing that.”

On defensive adjustments made during the game:
“We started keeping people in front of us, but when they did the ball screen, instead of what we would call a contact show where you try to stay with the big man too. We basically left the big man and stepped in more aggressively and had the guard become third man – the ball handler, the big and then our third guard. That was better. Our ball screen defense became much more aggressive. They had three or four shots right at the end of the clock, three’s. I thought our defense the last 24 minutes of the game was very good against a team that wants to penetrate a lot.”

On the shooting of Andre Dawkins:
“He’s a veteran player. He should play well. He fits in like a veteran player should. He can start or come off the bench or start in the second half. They went zone and that was right in his wheelhouse because we went to a couple sets. It should get us good shots against the zone. You can get good shots, but a kid’s got to knock them down, and he knocked them down. He should have had that one with a 16-point lead in the second half. We had a three-on-two and we didn’t pass the ball strong enough to him. It should have been a ‘boom boom’, 19-point lead. Our kids have got to learn that. We’ve got to grow with that. He spaces the court well.”

On how he gauges his team’s effort:
“Austin really played hard tonight. Before seeing it, you feel it. You feel how hard a kid is playing. And then if he’s talking off the ball and he’s animated, that’s playing hard too. I thought Ryan [Kelly] did a good job too. I thought he played very hard. We played hard. We played fine tonight. We’ve just got to be more efficient. And we played against a different type of team with those two guards spreading you and driving you the whole time. We made good adjustments and held them to the low 60s. With a lot of guys playing, we just should have scored a few more points.”