I was, like a lot of UVA Basketball fans were, begrudgingly rooting for Duke last night, despite Duke still being Duke, just a smidge or two to the good side of Vladimir Putin, the reason for me rooting for them being, the ACC has been getting beat up a lot the past, you know, lot of years.
It’s funny to me how quickly I reverted back to mean.
Up six on Houston with 33 seconds left, the Dookies suffered an epic collapse, capped by a key miss from All-Everything frosh Cooper Flagg with eight seconds left, ultimately losing, 70-67.
It’s not cool, in terms of karma, to be a hater, but, damn, that one felt as good as Coach K losing his last game at the 2022 Final Four.
“You go from some of the most special moments in the tournament to the most heartbreaking loss,” K’s hand-picked successor, Jon Scheyer, said after the game. “I’m not about to feel sorry for one second. These guys have done an incredible job. It’s heartbreaking. It’s incredibly disappointing. There’s a lot of pain that comes with this. That’s what the tournament is all about.”
Indeed, ‘tis.
And what that result is all about: Virginia is still the last ACC team to hang a national-title banner, from that magical run in 2019, which feels like forever ago now.
That said, Duke, for all the talent it gets every year, hasn’t hung a banner that matters since way back in 2015.
Remember Jahlil Okafor and Justise Winslow from that collection of one-and-dones?
They’re old guys in the G League now, all these years later.
Quinn Cook is in China, Rasheed Sulaimon in Montenegro.
Amile Jefferson has been coaching for three years.
It’s been a minute, as the kids say.
Of the 10 Duke teams since the 2015 title, this was the one that felt like it would be cutting down the nets on the Monday in April.
The Wall Street Journal had a story a couple of days ago about the dark money that has funded Duke Basketball to get to this point, with Scheyer blending Coach K’s decision to sell out his reputation to one-and-dones with a mix of one-and-dones and veteran players from the NIL/transfer portal.
This year’s Duke rotation has the usual Duke group of one-and-dones with three projected freshman NBA lottery picks, in Flagg, Kon Kneuppel and 7’2” project Khaman Maluach, with old-guy transfers Sion James and Maliq Brown playing key roles.
The dark money also helped keep Tyrese Proctor, a projected second-round pick in 2024, around for an extra year, because the NIL money was almost certainly more than the $578,000 that a second-round pick would get on an NBA two-way deal.
Basically, a lot of goddamn money went into this 2024-2025 Duke team.
And it all came crashing down in 33 surreal seconds.
It was shocking how much went wrong, starting with Flagg and James getting caught on a switch that left Emanuel Sharpe with an open three that cut the margin to three.
Then, Flagg and James, again, couldn’t get together on the inbounds, leading to a backcourt turnover, a missed Houston three, and follow-up slam from Joseph Tugler that got the deficit to one.
Proctor, dammit, you feel for him, missed the front end of a one-and-one, and Flagg was called for a foul on the rebound, which the interwebs are saying was controversial, though it wasn’t, gotta call a guy holding the inside guy’s arm down on a free-throw rebound.
J’Wan Roberts, 62 percent from the line on the season, made both ends of the one-and-one to put Houston up one with 19 ticks on the clock.
Scheyer called a timeout and set up a play for Flagg, who, you might remember, failed on final-possession plays in Duke’s losses earlier this year to Kentucky, Kansas and Clemson, but still, he’s your guy.
“Took it into the paint. Thought I got my feet set, rose up. Left it short, obviously. A shot I’m willing to live with in the scenario,” said Flagg, who finished his college career with a stat line that you’d expect from the #1 pick – 27 points, eight rebounds, four assists, three blocks, two steals.
One issue: he was just 8-of-19 from the floor.
Houston held Duke to one made shot from the floor in the final 10:31, a Flagg three with 3:18 to go that put the Dookies up nine, at 64-55.
“We held them to 37 percent the second half. We held that team to 67 points. That was a tempo we could live with. We could not win this game in the 80s. We couldn’t score 80,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said.
UVA Basketball fans who coined the term Embrace the Pace will like this stat: Duke, which averaged 66.0 possessions per game this season, had 58 possessions in this one.
For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth among the UVA fan base over the game having passed the pace-conscious Tony Bennett by, Houston is averaging 61.7 possessions per game this season, ranked 360th nationally.
Sitting at 361: Virginia, at 61.3 possessions per.
It’s not the pace, obviously, but rather, the guys you have playing, at whatever pace.
Sampson has the guys, and if you believe him, he was better prepared for this one because his team played in the Big 12.
“I hear what people say, Duke this. Duke that. Duke’s great. Jon Scheyer is awesome. But don’t sleep on Houston. Don’t sleep on Houston,” Sampson said after the game.
“We weren’t 34-4 playing in the Toy Poodle League. We were 19-1 in the Big 12. Playing in the Big 12 helped us. Shoutout to my Big 12 brethren, Brett Yormark and all the great coaches in the Big 12.”
We’ve got ourselves a new moniker for our ACC.
We’re the Toy Poodle League now.
I’m still OK with how those last 33 seconds turned out, but, damn, that stings.
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Chris Graham
