CHAPEL HILL — Basketball is a game of parts.
Even with Ty Lawson, Duke has more parts than UNC. Take away the Heels' star point guard, and Wednesday's result, an 89-78 Duke win at the Smith Center becomes inevitable, not easy, but inevitable.
UNC has better high-end parts than Duke in forward Tyler Hansbrough, who scored a game-high 28 points, and Lawson, who missed the game with an ankle injury, but Duke has more parts.
There was strength in numbers for the Devils in their first win over UNC in four tries to complete the first half of the ACC season at 8-0 and knock the Heels down to 6-2.
Greg Paulus hit 3s, Kyle Singler stretched UNC's defense and flipped the mismatch with Hansbrough to Duke's advantage, and even offensively-challenged forward Lance Thomas added a season-best 10 points.
For Duke to beat a team like UNC, which has a significant size advantage, it has to hit its 3-pointers. That's what Duke did. Paulus led the Devils with six 3-pointers and 18 points. As a team, Duke hit 13 3s, compared to three by UNC, two by Marcus Ginyard.
UNC traded 2s for 3s and that's a losing equation.
Wayne Ellington and Danny Green were Options 2 and 3 on Wednesday without Lawson, they combined to score 11 points. Ellington finished 3 of 14 — 0 for 6 from 3 — and Green didn't score until 54 seconds left in the game.
Duke's "other" parts, meanwhile, chipped in with Jon Scheyer (17 points) and Singler combining for 31 points.
And Thomas, who's normally Option 8 or 9, and basically in there as five available fouls, stepped up by hitting 5-of-7 shots.
