Milestone win for Duke's Coach K

Duke faced another deep deficit and was staring at yet another road loss, but these Blue Devils had an even bigger problem: They weren't following the instructions of their Hall of Fame coach.

So during some late breaks, Mike Krzyzewski turned control of the huddle over to the players, and that strategy led to his latest milestone victory.

DeMarcus Nelson capped a remarkable late rally by making 2 free throws with 1:01 remaining to lift No. 7 Duke past North Carolina State 87-86 on Saturday in Raleigh, N.C., giving Coach K his 800th career win.

"He kind of let us decide what we were going to do with the game," guard Jon Scheyer said, "because for a lot of it, we weren't doing the things that (the coaches) told us to do."

Nelson and Scheyer both scored 19 points for the Blue Devils (25-3, 12-2 ACC), who used a game-closing 14-5 run to take their only lead of the half, win their third straight and snap a two-game losing streak away from Cameron Indoor Stadium.

"For a couple of late timeouts, I let anyone who would actually want to talk -- and say something that somebody would listen to -- run the huddle," Krzyzewski said. "Teams become really good when they talk to each other. What happens is, they take ownership. We never took ownership of this game until late in the second half."

Ben McCauley scored 19 points for N.C. State (15-14, 4-11), and he made 1 of 2 free throws with 1:11 remaining to put the Wolfpack up 86-85. He fouled Nelson 10 seconds later, and the Duke captain -- a 45-percent free-throw shooter in his previous six games -- knocked down both.

"If I would have made that, we're in overtime right now," McCauley said.

Instead, he turned it over on N.C. State's next possession with 40 seconds remaining, and Duke ran down the clock, with Scheyer missing a 3-pointer with four seconds left. Courtney Fells got the rebound and pushed the ball to McCauley, whose 3 from about 30 feet bounced off the glass as time expired.

Krzyzewski is the sixth Division I men's coach to reach 800 wins. Coach K did it in his 1,064th game -- only Adolph Rupp and Dean Smith did it in fewer games -- and is 800-264 in his 33rd season.

"It is hard to put it in perspective because ... you're coaching this team, and it's more important what this team is doing than what you've done with other teams," Krzyzewski said.

In other games: Derrick Rose scored 23 points, including 11 in a five-minute span of the second half, to help No. 2 Memphis (28-1, 14-0 C-USA) pull away to a 76-67 victory over host Southern Mississippi (15-13, 7-7). … Alan Voskuil scored 18 points, including 6 straight free throws down the stretch, for host Texas Tech (15-13, 7-7 Big 12) in a win over No. 5 Texas (24-5, 11-3). … Brook Lopez scored 19 of his 25 points after halftime and pulled down 6 rebounds to help eighth-ranked Stanford (24-4, 13-3) maintain its Pac-10 title hopes by beating No. 22 Washington St. 60-53. The Cougars (22-7, 10-7) are 5-5 over their last 10.