SOUTHEAST REGIONAL : Hill Lifts Duke Over Marquette

Slowly, Duke was sinking in the Marquette mud bog Thursday night, the same way Kentucky did in the round of 32, slogging its way through a 25-point first half that needed nothing as much as a good hosing off.

It was grimy, it was dirty, it was enough to send Duke forward Grant Hill screaming at teammates during the intermission, advising them what to do with the basketball the next time they had it and Hill didn’t.

“I’m feeling it! I’m feeling it!” Hill shouted, loud enough for Coach Mike Krzyzewski to hear across the room.

Krzyzewski wasn’t fooled for a second.

“That’s his way of yelling at me,” Krzyzewski said after Hill scored 16 second-half points to lift Duke to a 59-49 victory in the NCAA Southeast Regional semifinals.

“He’s saying, ‘You dumb Polack, get me the ball!’ ”

Ask and you shall receive, Coach K always tells Hill. So Krzyzewski scrapped the idea of Hill bringing the ball down the floor each possession and had him concentrate on somehow finding a clearing in Marquette’s tall blue forest.

Hill blazed more than a few trails, including one spectacular drive-and-jam over a startled Jim McIlvaine, Marquette’s 7-foot-1 center, that sent the crowd at Thompson-Boling Arena into convulsions.

“I have a question for Grant,” said Kryzewski, interrupting Duke’s postgame news conference. “Grant, did I draw up that play when you drove down the middle and dunked over about eight people? I forgot how I drew that play up.”

Hill grinned and said: “I have to give a lot of credit to Coach for than dunk. He’s taught me a lot about attacking the hoop, the way he played at Army.”

Of course. Air Krzyzewski. The famed Flying Cadet.

“Grant’s actually been watching a lot of my old Army films,” Krzyzewski deadpanned. “I used to punch it down against Navy.”

Hill made seven of nine shots in the second half to finish with a game-high 22 points. Duke (26-5) also got 12 points and five blocked shots from center Cherokee Parks, who helped the Blue Devils beat Marquette “at our own game,” in the words of Warrior Coach Kevin O’Neill.

“I thought Duke played a great basketball game on the defensive end,” said O’Neill, whose Warriors lead the NCAA in field-goal defense. “We didn’t shoot the ball well (31.5%), but there’s a reason for that. Duke dug in on defense, rotated and came at us hard for 40 minutes.

“Most teams we played this year couldn’t sustain that. They’d let up for six minutes at a time and we’d get some buckets. Duke never let up. We had some good shots at the end, but we were too worn down to make them.”

Marquette, making its first Sweet 16 appearance since 1977, ends its season at 24-9. Forward Damon Key scored 12 points for the Warriors. McIlvaine scored 11 on four-of-13 shooting.