By DAVID DROSCHAK
AP Sports Writer
DURHAM, N.C. – It wasn’t J.J. Redick’s shooting or Chris Duhon’s floor game that snapped a rare ACC losing streak for No. 3 Duke. It was a collection of big men who have almost been forgotten on the inside.
Dahntay Jones scored 21 points and Shelden Williams added a season-high 18 as the Blue Devils avoided its first three-game conference skid in seven years with a 91-71 victory over Georgia Tech on Saturday.
“All we hear all the time is that we’re a shooting team and we’re a finesse team and all this stuff, but we’re beating each other every day in practice,” 6-foot-10 Nick Horvath said. “It’s fun to finally get some credit for it.”
Duke broke its worst league losing streak since January 1996 by taking just 13 3-pointers, matched a season low, as Williams, Horvath, Casey Sanders and Shavlik Randolph combined to go 13-for-21 from the field with 24 rebounds.
“It’s been a long week, a tough week,” coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “They stood in there and they’ve worked hard. They’re still trying to find out who the heck they are in the lot of cases, but today they found out that they could handle adversity and play well.”
Duke (13-2, 4-2), the nation’s top-ranked team last week, lost road games to Maryland and North Carolina State in a five-day span before bouncing back against the Yellow Jackets (9-7, 2-3), who lost their 13th straight to the Blue Devils and fell to 0-6 on the road this season.
“The losses are rare if we had (Christian) Laettner or (Shane) Battier, but this is a whole new team,” Krzyzewski said. “The reason two conference losses in a row is such big news is because we’ve had uncommon teams. We have to remember we’re developing as a basketball team.”
The Blue Devils rebounded without much help from Redick, the team’s leading scorer who was nursing a right foot injury suffered Wednesday night against the Wolfpack. Redick, who averages 17.2 points a game, was 2-for-10 from the field for 11 points, five in the last 1:18.
However, Redick made two free throws with 12:36 left to set the school record with 36 in a row. Christian Laettner held the previous mark with 35 straight in 1992.
“Not to have J.J. be the guy makes this even better,” Krzyzewski said. “Usually, he’s the guy we’re looking for. Instead, we kind of looked for each other.”
Without Redick’s outside touch, Duke pounded the Yellow Jackets on the inside as star freshman Chris Bosh was bothered by foul trouble all game.
The 6-foot-10 forward, the top shooter in the Atlantic Coast Conference at 60.4 percent and second-leading rebounder at 9.9, was 0-for-2 with five points and four rebounds.
B.J. Elder led Georgia Tech with 22 points, but the Yellow Jackets were called for a season-high 27 fouls.
“That’s life on the road,” Elder said.
“The only fouls that may have changed the game were the ones on Chris (Bosh),” added Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt.
Williams, 6-9 freshman, had a total of 21 points in his last four conference games, but he scored nine in the first half and then was a key player, along with Jones, as Duke stretched its 42-37 halftime lead to double digits early in the second half.
After Redick’s record-setting free throws gave Duke an 11-point lead, Jones hit a driving shot and added a 3-pointer, while Williams had a layup, a follow shot and a baseline jumper to make it 74-56 with 7:02 left.
The previous best scoring game for Williams, who had 13 rebounds, was 16 against Fairfield on Jan. 2.
“He was just like a battering ram there for awhile,” Krzyzewski said of Williams.
“Their intensity was greater than ours – collectively,” Georgia Tech guard Marvin Lewis said. “We weren’t ready to play in the second half.”
Georgia Tech was able to hang close in the opening 20 minutes despite an 0-for-9 stretch from the field that lasted 5? minutes. The offensive dry spell also included four of the Yellow jackets’ 10 first-half turnovers.
There were 25 fouls called in the first half as the teams combined to go 25-of-33 from the free throw line.
