Duke is coming off a blowout of Syracuse, taking a 101-64 victory on Monday night. It was a third straight win for Duke since they fell to North Carolina. After the Duke loss to North Carolina, Duke head coach Jon Scheyer claimed a staffer was punched as North Carolina fans stormed the court.
Orange County District Attorney Jeff Nieman has said there was no evidence of a Duke staffer being punched. Now, Scheyer has responded, discussing the DA's statement after the game, per Chris Lea of WRAL News.
“I would like to focus on Syracuse, but I’ll tell you, I know what I saw and I know what happened with our staff after the game, and that’s the bottom line and I’m not going to go and circle back or get into, I don’t know what was said or wasn’t said or what people want to claim, but I know what happened,” Scheyer said. “And, I’m always going to support our staff in those situations, and again, I could’ve even said more and I’m not going to do that, but we're moving on. I’m grateful for tonight’s win, but I don’t want to go back.”
Scheyer, clearly agitated, supported his prior statements, in which he said a staff member looked as if he had been trampled.
“He got hit in the face, got tramped, looked like he had been in a complete brawl after the game and he’s doing better now, but that should never happen,” Scheyer continued. “And that’s exactly what happened.”
While the Duke coach has continued to support the notion that one of his staff members was attacked, no evidence has been released publicly to support that, which is something the Orange County DA supported in comments to WRAL News.
“Multiple intentional violent acts… were implied or stated [or] accused and that's something I take very seriously. An unprovoked act of aggressive violence is a serious thing, and if that happened, I wanted us to get evidence of it, and if we could prove it, take it to court,” Orange County DA Nieman said. “This is my attempt to try to dispel … I'm comfortable saying false statement that people were punched at this event, because there's simply just no evidence of support that anybody was.”
For now, the back and forth has concluded, as Scheyer admitted not wanting to discuss it further. Now his focus can go back to the court, as Duke is 24-2 with a huge matchup on the horizon. Number three-ranked Duke will head to Washington DC to face off against number one-ranked Michigan on Saturday.
