LAVAL, QUE -- Freshmen Zion Williamson and R.J. Barrett, each registered a "double-double" as the Duke University Blue Devils defeated McGill 103-58 in men's preseason basketball before a sold-out crowd of 10,098 at Place Bell, Sunday.

Williamson bedazzled with 36 points and 13 rebounds, while Barrett, the high-profile native of Mississauga, Ont., had 23 points and 10 assists.

It gave the NCAA's Blue Devils a three-game sweep of their tour of Canadian U SPORTS programs, which also included victories over Ryerson (86-67) and Toronto (96-60). The two previous contests also drew capacity crowds but at the Paramount Fine Foods Centre, a smaller, 5,490 venue located in Mississauga, Ont. Sunday's event was the largest crowd ever to witness a McGill hoops contest and the Duke tour drew a combined 21,028, the most-attended three-game foreign tour in NCAA history, according to the Duke Basketball Twitter feed.

All three games were televised across North America, with ESPN airing them live across the U.S. and TSN picking up the live feed in Canada. RDS, the Quebec-based French-language network, aired the McGill game on a five-hour tape delay as they were previously committed to golf and tennis tournaments.

Senior Alex Paquin of Candiac, Que., accounted for 50 per cent of McGill's scoring with 29 points in a losing cause, matching his previous personal best with the Redmen, accomplished against Bishop's on Nov. 25, 2017. The 24-year-old applied finance major shot 12-for-19 from the floor, 2-for-3 from three-point range and 3-for-3 from the line. He played a game-high 33 minutes, was also credited with three assists and a steal, and received a standing ovation from the crowd when subbed out late in the game.

"I don't think you can control (Zion and R.J), you have to try to limit them and try to exploit their weaknesses," said the six-foot point-guard who despite being the shortest player on the court, was assigned the task of guarding the two 6-foot-7 stars considered to be the top-two ranked prospects for next year's NBA draft. "They're both lefties with outstanding height... and at the end of the day, they are so big, so athletic that you just have to play as hard as you can and hope they miss.

"Duke is obviously a great team but U SPORTS has really good basketball too," added Paquin, who led the Redmen in scoring last year with a 14.9 points-per-game average  after transferring from American University, an NCAA institution in Washington, D.C. "We see teams like Carleton, Laval, Concordia, Ryerson and Toronto -- all great teams that play probably the best basketball you can get in Canada."

McGill came out surprisingly effective and limited Duke to a 22-17 lead after the first quarter. But the visitors upped that to 47-34 at the half before pulling away. They outpointed the Redmen 34-11 in the third and 22-13 down the stretch.

"I thought they (McGill) were really good, said 71-year-old Blue Devils bench boss Mike Krzyzewski, better known as 'Coach K', who has led Duke to five national championships and is reported to be the NCAA's highest paid hoops coach with an annual salary of $8.89 million U.S. ($11.61 million CDN). "They actually came out the best of the three teams against us. They really played well. McGill played like they thought they were going to win. They played with verve and they played hard. They did smart stuff with the containment press.

"In the first half, when we beat (their press), we didn't beat it to score. We set up, and then they set up their defence and they plugged to where it looked like 'zone' but it was 'man'. Their coach does a really good job of that. In the second half, we didn't stop when we beat the press, we kept going and that helped. Also our defence was outstanding and we scored off of our defence. They tried to jam our rebounders after we got a defensive board and our guys were stronger with the ball in the second half, and that kind of gave us a numerical advantage."

Duke, which had a huge 44-21 edge in rebounds, forced 20 McGill turnovers and only committed a dozen. They held a 14-5 margin in steals and a 3-1 difference in blocks. Perhaps the most glaring discrepancy was in the free-throw department, where Duke went to the line a whopping 32 times, compared to just 11 by McGill. That translated into a 20-6 advantage on the scoreboard.

There are those who may question why McGill would play high-octane NCAA teams like Duke but not Redmen head coach David DeAveiro, who has guided his troops to five RSEQ conference championships in the past six years.

"(Playing Duke) gives us a larger profile and if anything, it gives a guy like Alex Paquin the exposure he deserves, said  DeAveiro. "But just in general, there's only three teams in Canada that have played Duke, and we were one of them. That's something that we can hang our hats on and I think that's the result of the hard work that our guys have put in over the last five or six years, the success that we've had. So we're very fortunate that Duke decided to play us and give us this opportunity."

The Blue Devils shot a ridiculous 55.1 per cent from the field (38/69), including a 7-for-21 effort from beyond the arc. McGill responded by shooting 38.7 per cent (24/62), making four of 18 treys.

"My hat goes off to the (fans in the) city of Montreal for embracing... and bringing an atmosphere to this game," DeAveiro added. "This is something that our guys are going to remember for the rest of their lives. I'm going to remember it for the rest of my life. And I think that the Duke team appreciated playing in front of a crowd like that as well."

McGill, which dropped to 0-5 in preseason play versus NCAA schools, will now get a seven-week respite before resuming their exhibition schedule at the Brock invitational tournament, Oct. 5-7, where they will confront Brock, UPEI and Ryerson. They return to Love Competition Hall Oct. 20-21, against Ottawa and Saint Mary's.

The Blue Devils are scheduled for an even longer break and will resume play on Oct. 23 when they host Virginia Union in another exhibition game.

REDMEN RAP: Coach DeAveiro received a warm hug from Duke's R.J. Barrett just before tip-off. The 54-year-old Portuguese native of Toronto had previously coached Barrett on the Canadian U-16 and U-17 teams... DeAveiro is heading overseas to Portugal in early September to give a basketball clinic for junior-aged youths. It will mark his first return since the age of 13 to the island of Madeira, where his parents were born... Among the faces in the crowd for this epic event was George Lengvari Jr., (BCL'66), a former Redmen player who has donated much to McGill, including the George Lengvari Basketball Awards, presented to top student-athletes to help ease the financial pressures of university life... Also spotted was McGill principal and vice chancellor Suzanne Fortier as well as Dan Jacob (BSc., Kinesiology '05), the former McGill hockey captain and assistant coach who now serves on the coaching staff of the American Hockey League's Laval Rocket.