Duke 67 Miami 46

Duke's trip to Coral Gables, while a lot nicer than last year's trip, nonetheless exposed Duke to some icebergs or landmines, whichever metaphor catches your mood.

But first the good news. Earlier in the season, Jabari Parker drew comparisons to Carmelo Anthony. After this game, someone else will have to be the measure.

But who?

There's no question that Parker can shoot from anywhere and can be a huge force. He'll have 30 and 40 point games in his future.

In this game, though, while he led all scorers with 17, he pulled down 15 boards - and six of those were offensive. Now that's impressive.

That was a huge performance by Parker, far more interesting than his big scoring games, not that we're discounting those. But a rebounding night like he had against Miami is just huge.

Duke ended up outrebounding Maimi 42-28 and 15-9 offensively.

Amile Jefferson continued his solid rebounding, grabbing seven and four offensively, while Rodney Hood grabbed six on the defensive boards.

Rebounds are there when teams miss, of course, and not all the misses were Miami's. Duke hit 42.9% for the game, partly but not entirely due to Miami's defense, while the 'Canes hit 35.4%.

It was a solid road win and keeps Duke in ACC contention.

However, it wasn't a perfect game and some of the imperfections might have cost Duke dearly in a more competitive game.

Quinn Cook is probably going to get some film clips from this game. He had a couple of what The ACC Sports Journal's Jim Young called "inexplicable" turnovers and an intentional foul which was just foolish and could have resulted in a five point swing.

About three and a half minutes later, Jabari Parker was given a technical for hanging on the rim. He appeared to doing it to regain some balance but still: that could have been another five point swing.

As it happened, Miami gained four points instead of 10, and Cook's foolishness came with Duke up 15 while Parker's pullup came with a 16-point lead.

The thing is, even though Miami doesn't have the players to pull off that sort of a comeback, the 'Canes definitely have the heart. They never gave up, never stopped trying.

Duke was a vastly superior team blessed with much more talent and so could get away with a number of mistakes which could have been critical against, say, Syracuse (arguably, Duke made some of the same mistakes against Clemson, and you saw what happened there) and they're easy to overlook because of some of the more spectacular plays we saw in this game and Duke's overall dominance.

You can bet that when the team goes over this game, as happy as everyone will be with Parker's performance and a number of Duke strong points (rebounding overall, defense, toughness), those errors will draw a lot of remedial attention.

With the win, Duke moves to 15-4 overall and 4-2 in the ACC. That's good for a share of third and puts Duke 1.5 games out of first place.