NEW YORK — Jared McCain drained eight 3-pointers — a school record in an NCAA Tournament game — and finished with 30 points Sunday for fourth-seeded Duke, which never trailed in a 93-55 win over 12th-seeded James Madison in a South Region second-round game at Barclays Center.
Duke (26-8) will face top-seeded Houston in a Sweet 16 game Friday night.
“Just really proud of these guys and proud of our team,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “James Madison, you’re playing a team that has three losses the whole year and they had a really impressive performance against Wisconsin. I don’t know if we expected this, but I just thought our guys came out with such a great competitiveness and they were obviously ready to play.”
James Madison (32-4), the Sun Belt Conference champion, had the nation’s longest active winning streak snapped at 14 games.
McCain’s eight 3-pointers broke the school NCAA Tournament record of seven held by Quinn Cook in a 78-71 first-round loss to Mercer on March 21, 2014.
The 30 points by McCain — who exited with 9:19 left — were the most by a Blue Devils player in the NCAA Tournament since Zion Williamson had 32 points in a 77-76 win over Central Florida in a second-round game on March 24, 2019.
Tyrese Proctor (18 points), Jeremy Roach (15 points) and Kyle Filipowski (14 points) also scored in double figures for Duke, which is in the Sweet 16 for the first time since advancing to the Final Four in Mike Krzyzewski’s final season in 2022.
The Blue Devils haven’t missed the Sweet 16 in consecutive NCAA Tournaments since 2007-08 — the freshman and sophomore years under Krzyzewski for Scheyer.
Terrence Edwards Jr. scored 13 points while T.J. Bickerstaff added 11 points for James Madison, which reached the second round for the first time since 1983. The Dukes were trying to become the first No. 12 seed to advance to the Sweet 16 since Oregon State went to the Elite Eight in 2021.
“We ran into a Duke team I thought was very sharp,” James Madison coach Mark Byington said. “I mean, they came out and they put us on our heels and our mistakes compounded tonight. It wasn’t just one area. Sometimes we have bad areas, but it was too many things in one night to try to beat a good Duke team.”
McCain opened the game with a 3-pointer and hit his first six shots from beyond the arc while scoring 22 points — more than he scored in all but three of the first 33 games — as Duke led by as many as 24 points before ending the half with a 47-25 lead.
The Blue Devils pulled down seven offensive rebounds and had 13 second-chance points before intermission.
Edwards hit a layup 47 seconds into the second half for James Madison, but the Blue Devils scored the next six points and the Dukes — whose biggest deficit this season entering Sunday was a 19-point hole in an eventual 80-74 win over Georgia Southern on Feb. 24 — got no closer than 22 the rest of the way.
Duke led by at least 30 points for the final 8:49.
–Jerry Beach, Field Level Media
