Hungover Duke basketball team stunned by Virginia in Cameron

Virginia stunned the Duke basketball team in Cameron Indoor Stadium. 

The North Carolina hangover was real for the Duke basketball team, and it showed on Monday night.

Virginia (15-9, 9-5 ACC) caught the No. 7 Blue Devils (19-4, 9-3 ACC) at the perfect time after their 20-point road win over the Tar Heels. Duke was slow coming out of the gates despite the raucous home crowd.

Tony Bennett’s team took a lead with 9:22 to go in the first half and held that lead until there was 4:01 to go in the second half as the advantage for the Cavaliers grew to as many as 12 points in the opening stanza.

However, Reece Beekman would singlehandedly stun Duke with a game-tying layup with 1:48 to play and won the game with 1.1 seconds left on a 3-pointer, 69-68.

It looked like the Blue Devils would escape with the victory on two occasions after Kihei Clark missed two shots with the Cavs trailing by two, 68-66, with 1:17 to go but a turnover by Paolo Banchero gave Virginia new life.

The Cavaliers would miss another potential game-tying shot by Jayden Gardner, and Theo John pulled down the strong rebound. But a quick whistle blew for a jump ball that kept the possession with Virginia as Beekman took center stage.

Banchero got a good look, all things considered, with 1.1 seconds left, but the more troubling aspect was that it was his first shot attempt of the second half.

Prior to the game-winning shot from Beekman, Virginia was 1-of-11 from 3-point range in the game.

Duke committed 14 turnovers, which resulted in 20 points for the visitors.

Duke basketball continues to lose in impossible fashion

The Blue Devils have four losses this season by a combined nine points.

Duke held a lead at some point in the final 65 seconds in each of those losses and led in the final 35 seconds in three of the defeats.

AJ Griffin was one of the heroes on Saturday against the Tar Heels, but he was nearly unplayable on Monday with just two points on 1-of-7 shooting. And Banchero only had nine points.

Only Mark Williams and Trevor Keels surpassed double-digits with 16 and 12 points, respectively.

Mike Krzyzewski’s team will have to bounce back quickly from the defeat as the Blue Devils have two more games this week due to a COVID rescheduling.

Duke will travel to Clemson to face the Tigers (12-10, 4-7 ACC) on Thursday night (8:00 p.m., ACC Network) before heading north to Massachusetts to face Boston College (9-12, 4-7 ACC) on Saturday evening (5:00 p.m., ACC Network).