Duke is able to out-tough the Boilermakers

Reporting from Houston — 

There was Chris Kramer, sprawled out on the floor, not moving very much during the second half of Duke’s 70-57 victory over Purdue on Friday. It was the product of a hard screen that was set by Brian Zoubek. After a scary moment, Kramer, one of

No. 4-seeded Purdue’s toughest players, got up and went back into the game.

But the message was clear: Duke has been out of the Final Four for too long, and it is determined to get back there. If Purdue was going to have any chance of beating top-seeded Duke without Robbie Hummel, it would have to make the contest nails-on-chalkboard painful to watch.

It needed to slow the pace and play a physical game, sort of like what it did in the Big Ten Conference for much of the season. But Duke beat Purdue at its own game and for the first time since 2004, the Blue Devils have reached the Elite Eight.

“I thought this was an example of a game someone doesn’t lose,” Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “We had to really win this game.”

Given the high standards that Krzyzewski has set for the program in his tenure, that alone is not satisfactory.

Duke will face Baylor on Sunday with a trip to Indianapolis on the line.

Zoubek has given teammates stitches with screens that he set in practice, but he wasn’t the only one who came prepared to match Duke’s physicality.

Purdue “played so hard, really hard,” Krzyzewski said. “I thought for the first 17 minutes of the game, we were playing hard, they were playing harder. For the rest of the game, we either played as hard or harder than them.”

The defining moment came when Nolan Smith, who shot two for 10 in the first half, scored seven straight points to give Duke a nine-point lead with 7:58 left. In Hummel’s absence, Purdue needed someone other than E’Twuan Moore and JaJuan Johnson to help shoulder the scoring load.

That didn’t happen Friday. Johnson and Moore combined for 17 for 35, the rest of Purdue three for 19.

Kyle Singler had 24 points, Jon Scheyer had 18 and Smith finished with 15 for Duke.

“We’ve been in some tough games throughout the year, some really tough games,” Scheyer said. “So when we look at each other, we know what we need to do as a team.”