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In his absence, Maye took the lead in finishing with a team record of 30 points and 15 rebounds in his last match at the Cameron Indoor Stadium. The other members of the group, Johnson and Brooks, brought 26 and 14 points respectively, while the Tar Heels (21-5, 11-2 ACC) resisted an angry mob that was ready to see the Blue Devils (23). -3, 11 -2 ACC) make a show.
UNC quickly took the lead early in the game, leaving the team with plenty of room, getting bucket after bucket in the paint with Williamson eliminated from the match. At the end of the first half, the Tar Heels had 34 of 42 points scored and the Blue Devils had no answer because they had missed out on a group of big men who could not stop the attackers from North Carolina. Maye alone had 18 points before half-time, four more than the 14 combined he had scored in the previous two games against Virginia and Wake Forest.
"I think every game is different," said Maye. "We won against Wake, and it was tough against Virginia, but I thought we had a good bounce and everything was not about points."
Yet it was the points allotted by front-row members at a party where first-year goaltender Coby White struggled to find a rhythm. He finished with nine points on a shot of 3-14. The whites were not the only player off the field to have experienced difficulties. As a team, UNC shot just 2-20 from the back of the bow and Duke was not much better, recording 8 out of 39 from the 3-point distance .
"We were not shooting and we were doing it early, so we insisted a lot to get it in and score," Johnson said.
Williamson's departure, which allowed Maye, Johnson and Brooks to easily attack the basket, became more obvious in the second half as the remaining Blue Devils were charged with finishing the match.
But Duke's field players continued to watch helplessly as the less-traveled Tar Heel pitch separated them. Brooks, Johnson and Maye scored 32 points more in the second half to give them 70 points a night. As a team, North Carolina has finished the game with 62 points, the highest number of UNC since winning Tennessee Tech on November 16th.
With 4 minutes and 35 seconds remaining in the match, Maye broke the 30-point mark for the second time this season, sealing the team's biggest win at Duke since March 3, 2012.
"These 30 points mean a lot," said Johnson. "Buckets when we really needed them, a lot of effort, a lot of intensity and I'm really proud of him."
And after the final ringing sounded and the players left the field, the journalists who would normally have swarmed Williamson were in the visitors' locker room.
They surrounded Maye, calmly sitting in a folding chair in the center of the locker room even as he seemed to want to avoid the spotlight on one night when he and his court mates had stolen the limelight.
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