Duke and Arizona will meet in the Sweet 16 on Thursday night with the winner moving on to the Elite 8 while the loser will see their season come to an end. That win or go home scenario adds a fair amount of pressure, which has generally weighed most heavily on young players during the history of the NCAA Tournament. So could it be a problem for head coach Jon Scheyer's team as Duke continues its post season run?
The answer is, of course, to be determined, but several pundits worry that the extra pressure added to the relative inexperience of a Blue Devil team that starts three freshmen could expose a potential weakness in one of the title favorites.
Recently former Duke star Grant Hill related a story of how former head coach Mike Krzyzewski prepared his team to take down the 1991 UNLV Runnin' Rebels, a team that was tearing through the college basketball landscape on the way to what should have been back-to-back national titles.
UNLV had beaten Duke by 30 in the 1990 national title game and had rolled through their first 34 games with an undefeated record. 33 of those victories came by double figures with only Georgetown keeping the final margin within 10, losing by eight in the second round of the tournament.
What Coach K told his players, and what Hill and his teammates banked on, was that the Rebels' lack of close game experience would ultimately be their undoing. By the time the Blue Devils rebounded Anderson Hunt's errant last second three pointer to win 79-77, the Duke coach's prediction had come true.
Fast forwarding nearly 34 years to the day of that historic upset and Hill is among those college basketball personalities that has raised the question of this year's Duke team being able to answer the bell when adversity strikes. The reason for the question is simple...the Blue Devils rolled through the ACC schedule winning a number of their match-ups by double figures including a handful of 30-plus point blowouts.
Now, in fairness to Coach Scheyer's team, there have been some closer games in recent times, but those three ACC Tournament contests had something of large asterisk on the results (all wins) due to the injuries to Cooper Flagg and Maliq Brown. Outside of those three games in Charlotte without two of their top six players, Duke hasn't played a close game in months aside from a six point loss at Clemson on February 8th and then an eight point win at Wake Forest on January 25th. Everything else was a blowout.
Despite the well documented ACC futility, Scheyer and his players believe that the Blue Devils have been able to find tests along the way and are better for it.
"We've had some moments that we've been in throughout this year that I think we've kind of taken and learned from," said Cooper Flagg. "And some were losses, I think all three of them. We had some good late game situations that we definitely watched a lot of film on and learned from."
Classmate Kon Knueppel agreed with his roommate saying that while the results don't always show it, Duke has used many of its in-game situations as a chance to prepare for the moments March often brings.
"We practice a bunch of game situations, whether it's in the half, start of second half, end of the game," said Knueppel. "That's something we do a bunch in practice, so when close games come, we'll be ready."
The team's de-facto captain, junior Tyrese Proctor, pointed to the ACC Tournament when Flagg and Brown were sidelined with what initially seemed to be serious injuries. After watching Brown being stretchered out of the arena to a local hospital after another separated shoulder and then seeing Flagg situated in a wheelchair and being rolled into the X-ray facility in Charlotte within a few minutes of each other, the Blue Devils tuned out the distractions and rallied back from 14 down to beat Georgia Tech to move on. The next night a clearly fatigued Duke team was forced to withstand a furious North Carolina rally that saw the Tar Heels battle back into the final moment of regulation. The third straight shorthanded game of the weekend saw Knueppel and Proctor help rally Duke from a halftime deficit against Louisville to win the ACC Championship going away.
"I think the thing we've learned in some of these games, just the value of every possession," said Scheyer following the ACC Championship game. "Postseason is different now. So one turnover, I think if you look at the Carolina game, one turnover can totally change the momentum of how the game is going. I think that's something we had to go through to really understand postseason basketball is different."
Certainly the stakes are much higher these days, given the potential finality for several of Duke's players should they suffer a loss. If and when that occurs, it'll mark the end of the college careers for Flagg, Knueppel, and Proctor along with Khaman Maluach, Sion James, and Mason Gillis. And that's why Duke understands the importance of playing through and beyond its collective youth while balancing the idea of savoring every moment.
"This is just something I dreamed about ever since I was a little kid," said Flagg. "These are the moments that I imagined myself being in when I was in the driveway, things like that. It's just a surreal feeling to be here in these moments and have these opportunities. I just feel really blessed."
When the ball goes up around 9:40 PM on Thursday, Duke will be a nine point favorite against the Wildcats, but the Blue Devils are certainly aware of the dangers Arizona can present. And then there's the Caleb Love factor as the former North Carolina guard has a storied history against the Blue Devils in March after he hit a game clinching three pointer in the 2022 Final Four.
"I just think that me not being afraid of the moment and me trying to impose my will, kind of like St. Louis swagger to the game," said Love when asked about his success against Duke. "Me being from St. Louis, I'm not afraid of anything, anybody. I think just me channeling that, my inner St. Louis in me."
Three years past that big time image, Love hasn't lost any of his confidence, though he admits this may be the best Duke team he's seen so far.
"But this Duke team does -- they're physical. They're long. They're athletic and things like that. We've got to play kind of mind games and things like that to create advantages for ourselves on both ends of the floor."
The "mind games" in question could very well become more effective if the Wildcats and bring game pressure down the stretch against the Blue Devils, something Duke clearly struggled with against North Carolina in the ACC semifinal round (albeit without the presence of Flagg and Brown). It's something head coach Tommy Lloyd believes is possible so long as his team plays better than it did in the first meeting in November.
"The rebounding is something we're always going to emphasize, and we know it's not going to be easy, but we're here for it," said Lloyd. "Obviously we're a different team than when we played them, and we didn't play good that game. I'm sure they would say they're a different team, and I don't think Duke played that great that game. It's going to be interesting to see how it looks when we get out there tomorrow."
