DURHAM, N.C. -- Virginia men's basketball coach Pete Gillen sat in the team bus Sunday night, his blank stare blaring out the window. The ride home up Interstate 85 would be a long one.
Minutes earlier, amid Cameron Crazy chants of "sweat, Pete, sweat," Gillen's Cavaliers suffered their fourth-straight conference defeat, an 80-66 trouncing at the hands of Duke.
Gillen's postgame routine was familiar.
"I thought our kids played well," he said. "We took some steps forward. Now we got to play well and win."
Virginia (9-5, 0-4 ACC) led 17-10 midway through the first half. After Duke's Daniel Ewing converted a layup to cut the Cavaliers' lead to five, Gillen called a 30-second timeout that would change the pace of the game in Duke's favor.
The Blue Devils (13-0, 3-0) reeled off a 20-6 run over the next seven minutes and finished the half ahead by six, despite receiving only eight points from scoring leader J.J. Redick.
But the junior from Roanoke wouldn't be contained for long. Redick erupted in the second period, shooting four for four from behind the arc to finish with 28 points.
"They spurted early in the second half and they turned up the juice a little bit," Gillen said.
Point guard Sean Singletary led Virginia with 19 points on seven for 12 shooting, but cranked out only two assists. As a team, the Cavaliers managed only five helpers on the night, partly because they failed to finish on several point blank shots.
"In the open court, we didn't go a good job," Gillen said. "We should have converted better in the open court."
With 13 minutes remaining, Virginia sophomore Gary Forbes missed a dunk that would have cut the Duke lead to eight.
Donte Minter grabbed a rebound off of a DeMarcus Nelson miss and passed the ball to Forbes on the outlet. Forbes pushed the ball to the other end and, instead of going in for the easy layup, he chose to challenge Duke center Shelden Williams with a high-flying dunk.
Williams wasn't having it. He had a career night, recording 16 points and 11 rebounds to go along with a career single-game high nine blocked shots. He also limited Virginia senior Elton Brown's output to 11 points and six rebounds, and helped the Blue Devils to out-rebound the Cavaliers, 37-35.
Williams combined with guards Redick and Ewing for 61 of Duke's 80 points.
Ewing suffered a lower leg injury that appeared to be serious in the final minutes of the first half, but the senior returned to play nearly all of the second half en route to a 17-point performance.
Virginia kept the game close with near-perfect free throw shooting. The Cavaliers finished 20-21 from the stripe.
Forbes added 17 points and 10 rebounds for Virginia, which shot only 35 percent from the field on the game and made only two of eight three-point attempts.
The Cavaliers might seem to have all the right pieces -- a trio of senior leaders and a Philadelphia Player of the Year to name a few -- but their season is fitting together as well as a 2-year-old would put together a puzzle.
Now, at 0-4 in the ACC, the Cavaliers have to figure out how to right a season deeply submerged in the wrong. Singletary said Wednesday's game at Maryland would be the perfect time to get things right.
"Everybody's on the same page like we were at the beginning of the season," he said. "We think we can go in there [Maryland] and get a win. Our conference record right now doesn't mean anything. We've got a lot more games to play -- we'll be alright.
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