Matthew Hurt joins elite Duke basketball company in defeat

A prolific outing put Matthew Hurt on some exclusive Duke basketball lists.

Prior to the Duke basketball team’s 80-73 home letdown at the hands of Louisville (13-5, 8-4 ACC) in overtime on Saturday evening, dropping the Blue Devils (11-9, 9-7 ACC) to the bottom of the NCAA Tournament bubble, only twice had a player under head coach Mike Krzyzewski scored 35 points or more in a losing effort.

Those two occurrences were the 35-point display from Zion Williamson in a January 2019 overtime home game versus Syracuse and the 41-point performance from JJ Redick at Georgetown in January 2006. And both of the beloved Blue Devil legends reached those totals while shooting at least 50 percent from the field.

Now, go ahead and add Matthew Hurt to that list.

Against the Cardinals, before fouling out in the final minute of the extra period, the sophomore forward scored 37 points. It marked the first 30-point outing of Hurt’s college career and the first time a Blue Devil had reached 37 points since the 2017 Champions Classic win when Grayson Allen went for the same amount against Michigan State.

Plus, as was the case with Allen, Williamson, and Redick, Hurt was highly efficient. The former five-star prep out of Minnesota finished 15-for-21 from the field, including 2-for-6 from 3-point land, plus 5-for-6 from the charity stripe. He also added seven rebounds, a block, and a steal — without committing a single turnover — across 43 minutes on the court.

Flirting with another Duke basketball single-game record

Doing the math, Matthew Hurt accounted for 50.7 percent of Duke’s point total in the L to Louisville.

Afterward, a Twitter account named “SameronCrazy” noted that only Vince Taylor tops Hurt in this regard across Mike Krzyzewski’s 41 years at the helm in Durham. As part of a group of 1981-82 Blue Devils who wound up with a final record of 10-17, Taylor once scored 24 of his team’s 47 points (51.1 percent) in a one-point home win over Georgia Tech.

Currently sitting third on this list is Danny Ferry at 49.6 percent, from his 1988-89 senior campaign when he set Duke’s all-time single-game scoring record with 58 points in a 117-102 victory at Miami.

Finally, Hurt’s 37-point show did break the Duke basketball record for the most points in a game across the 19-game Louisville series (Blue Devils still lead, 10-9). The late Art Heyman had held the top two spots on that list with totals of 35 and 33 points against the Cardinals back in the early 1960s.

Matthew Hurt and the Blue Devils will head to Atlanta to take on Georgia Tech (13-8, 9-6 ACC) at 8 p.m. Tuesday before closing out their regular season in Chapel Hill against UNC (15-8, 9-5 ACC) at 6 p.m. Saturday.

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