By AARON BEARD
AP Basketball Writer

GREENSBORO, N.C.(AP) -- Miss after miss, open look after open
look, yet Jon Scheyer ignored them all.

He wasn't going to stop shooting, not with an Atlantic Coast
Conference tournament championship on the line and fourth-ranked
Duke clinging to a one-point lead in the final seconds. He
curled around a screen, took a pass and launched a 3-pointer
that dropped perfectly through the net.

"It just wasn't falling," Scheyer said, "but at the end of the
games, I felt confident."

Scheyer finished with 16 points along with that critical 3 with
18 seconds left to help Duke hold off Georgia Tech 65-61 in
Sunday's final, giving the Blue Devils a record 18th ACC
championship and setting them up to receive the No. 1 seed in
the South Regional of the NCAA tournament.

Kyle Singler scored 20 points and earned MVP honors for the
top-seeded Blue Devils (29-5), who blew most of an 11-point lead
with 6 minutes left before Scheyer's big shot. Nolan Smith also
had 16 points to help Duke break a tie with rival North Carolina
for the most ACC tournament titles, while giving Hall of Fame
coach Mike Krzyzewski his 12th title to move within one of Dean
Smith for the most in league history.

In a tournament filled with upsets, it took a gritty effort from
Duke's high-scoring "Big Three" to hold off a determined
comeback from the seventh-seeded Yellow Jackets (22-12), who
were trying to become the first team in tournament history to
win four games in four days. Duke ran out to an 8-0 lead in the
opening minutes and led the entire day, but in the end,
Scheyer's composure took over when the game hung in the balance.

"There's something about Scheyer that produces wins," Krzyzewski
said. "I've loved coaching him because he has this spirit. He's
never afraid and I admire that because as a player I'm not sure
I had that all the time. I'm not sure many players have it all
the time, but Jon has it and it's a beautiful thing."

He missed his first six 3-pointers before finally knocking one
down to give the Blue Devils a 52-41 lead with about 6 minutes
left, and stood at 1-for-8 when the Yellow Jackets ran off nine
straight points to get within 60-59 on Derrick Favors' dunk with
47.9 seconds left.

But as the Blue Devils ran the clock down, Scheyer lost Glen
Rice Jr. around a screen from Brian Zoubek, took a pass from
Smith and confidently launched the 3 from the right side. He
even held his extended right arm in the air throughout the
ball's flight before it dropped through the net to send the
crowd into a roar.

"I knew it was nothing but the bottom," fellow senior Lance
Thomas said. "I didn't even go for the rebound."

Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt could only tip his hat to
Scheyer.

"If you're a basketball fan, enjoy it for what it is," Hewitt
said. "I told him after the game - I said, 'That's a hell of a
shot you just made.' If he misses that, we're winning the
basketball game, because we're getting the rebound - it's going
to come out long - and we're going to score."

Instead, after a driving basket from Iman Shumpert, Singler
knocked down two free throws with 9 seconds left to make it a
two-possession game and essentially seal the victory.

It was fitting that Duke punctuated the game at the free throw
line. The Blue Devils made 24 of 28 free throws, including 21 of
23 in the second half to offset a 6-of-22 (27 percent) shooting
performance after the break and keep the Yellow Jackets in
catch-up mode almost all game.

Singler shot just 3 of 15 from the field, though he did make 14
of 16 free throws - the 14 were a championship-game record - and
finished with six rebounds. He had a nasty red scratch about 4
inches long on the back of his right shoulder, the result of
diving over a courtside table for a loose ball, almost landing
on Dick Vitale and ending up on the floor between press-row
tables late in the first half.

When the horn sounded, Singler leapt into the arms of Smith for
a hug near the sideline, than ran to hug Zoubek as the Blue
Devils began their oncourt celebration.

"We just need to get refreshed and wherever we're going to go,
we'll go," Krzyzewski said of the NCAA tournament, "but I think
we'll go there better than we were a week ago."

In many ways, it had to be a relief considering everything that
had gone on in Greensboro this week.

The Blue Devils were the only one of the top six seeds to make
it to the semifinals in a tournament that had seen a bevy of
ugly, low-scoring games in a Greensboro Coliseum that had
numerous rows of empty green seats in the upper level from
tipoff of Thursday's games.

By Sunday's final, Duke fans had gobbled up plenty of tickets
from fans whose schools had lost, putting plenty of royal blue
in the seats and creating a homecourt advantage for a team
playing about an hour's drive west of its Durham campus to make
Georgia Tech's job even tougher.

Favors had 22 points and 11 rebounds to lead the Yellow Jackets,
who did enough to take care of their once-shaky NCAA tournament
prospects after losing five of seven to close the regular
season. They received the No. 10 seed in the Midwest Regional.

Georgia Tech was trying to become the lowest-seeded team to win
the tournament and they hadn't won it since capping a similar
run as a No. 6 seed under Bobby Cremins by upending top-seeded
and eventual national champion North Carolina in the 1993 final.
Cremins, now the coach at College of Charleston, sat behind the
Georgia Tech bench for this one only to see the Yellow Jackets
fall short of matching their '93 run.

"We're proud of what we did this tournament," Georgia Tech
junior Gani Lawal said, "but we're just sad that we couldn't
pull it out."