Though Elon came to the Greensboro Coliseum hoping to celebrate an end-of-year win, the Phoenix lost to the Duke Blue Devils with a final score of 86-48.
Elon started the game with Lucas Troutman winning the tip-off and giving Elon the first possession, and senior Sebastian Koch followed up by scoring the first two points for Elon at 17:40. The Phoenix kept the Blue Devils within 10 points until 13:54, when Andre Dawkins shot his second three-pointer to make the score 14-2.
Duke continued to rack up the points, making the score 35-18 at halftime.
In the second half, Elon had the first possession, but the Blue Devils immediately scored four quick points on the Phoenix. Coming back from the media timeout, Duke scored three more points on the Phoenix, followed by senior Lucas Troutman making a layup to bring the score to 43-21.
Elon struggled throughout the second half, only scoring 34 points to Duke's 51.
Lucas Troutman and Ryley Beaumont were the highest scoring Elon players of the game, both earning 11 points. Troutman had seven rebounds and Beaumont had two.
After the game, Beaumont reflected on the game, saying, "They are a really good team, and we didn't play well. That's why the outcome was what is was."
He admitted that looking back on the game, a major issue that the Phoenix had was the amount of turnovers.
"Looking at the first half they had about 15 points off turnovers and being down 17 points. That's a big problem," Beaumont said.
Though it was a disappointing loss for the Phoenix, Coach Matheny knows that his players are going to use this experience to improve. "We aren't just going to flush it. As much as we would like to just not think about it because they punched us, they really knocked us down. We have to learn from it," he said after the game.
After this game, Elon's record drops to 7-7. Elon's next game is at 2pm on January 4th at Western Carolina.