Cooper Flagg got the ball at his own free-throw line with 4.6 seconds left. He looked up at the clock and sped down the court. Arizona was out of sorts in transition defense, and Flagg stopped behind the three-point line with a ton of space around him. He beat the buzzer easily. He’d hit a three on the previous possession, too. “We talk about inflection points,” said Kon Knueppel, who had 20 points in Duke’s 100-93 win over Arizona in the Sweet 16 last Thursday, “and the end of the half is a really big inflection point. So it was tie ballgame, and hit two threes gives us a bunch of momentum coming into the second half.” Flagg finished with 30 points, six rebounds, and seven assists.
Flagg didn’t do as much in the Elite Eight win over Alabama on Saturday, but he also didn’t have to. Alabama-Duke had the look of a classic beforehand, and then the Blue Devils jumped out to a 15-5 lead five minutes in and were never really challenged in a 85-65 win. They put it away with a 13-0 stretch over five minutes late in the game. Flagg opened that run with an impressive one-hander after backing down AP All-American Mark Sears. He beat Sears again a few minutes later with a layup he basically shot sideways.
“Something that I’ve said a lot through this whole year is we just have such a talented team,” Flagg said. “Each night could be somebody else's night. I think tonight Kon kind of stepped up and had the ball a lot. We ran a lot of actions for him. Tyrese was huge for us.”
That’s Tyrese Proctor, who had 17 points on 7-for-10 shooting; Knueppel led Duke with 21. Proctor’s steal and fast-break layup started to break things open in the first half. Three of Knueppel’s five assists came on alley-oop dunks. Another came on a nifty play that began when Proctor passed it to Knueppel in the corner. This drew out Proctor’s defender, Labaron Philon, who actually tipped the ball on the play. Now that he’d have a step on Philon, Proctor cut to the hoop and Kneuppel hit him for an easy layup.
Duke makes shots from everywhere, doesn’t turn it over, and passes the ball around. Fifty-eight percent of Duke’s field goals have come with an assist this year, which ranks 45th of 364 teams in Division I. Despite all that passing, the Blue Devils aren’t a plodding team with long possessions. Anything but, actually: The Blue Devils average 83.7 points a game, ninth in the country. They rebound 34 percent of their misses (52nd). On defense, they force opponents to earn buckets from the field; only 17 percent of opponent points come from the line.
That Duke defense confounds opponents. On Saturday, it stymied one of the best offenses in the country. Alabama plays the fastest tempo in the nation and 46 percent of its shots are threes; the Blue Devils held them to 25 percent on their 32 threes. Duke switched screens most of the game, which they can do because the lineup is tall and everybody’s fast enough to make that a viable option. “We have a 7-foot-2 guy switching onto one of the best guards in the country, and he’s doing a pretty good job moving his feet,” head coach Jon Scheyer said. “Same thing, we had him in a deep drop, as well, because just trying to protect our paint more and have our guards really fight over.”
Alabama coach Nate Oats almost seemed resigned to his team’s fate inside against that 7-foot-2 guy: “They’ve got Khaman Maluach, who has a 9-foot-8 reach. He protects the rim at a high level. So the way we want to play—it's been top-five offense in the country, we've led the country in scoring … when they’ve got a rim protector, it's hard to get rim shots. At the rim we shot 48 percent. We were 12 of 25. You know, he made that tough.” Alabama finished the season shooting 60 percent on two-pointers, fourth in the nation.
It is not new for a Duke team to be good on both ends of the floor. It’s also not unheard of for a Duke squad to be a decent basketball team to watch. But as a journalist, I must report an uncomfortable truth: Scheyer’s team is pretty darn likable.
Yeah, I know. For at least the last 25 years or so, Duke has had a reputation as a school with fans that are front-runners and poseurs and dorks and frat boys and scalawags and reprobates and people who are too mean to Brian Zoubek. Duke fans weren’t even punished for that last one: Zoubek’s defense on the penultimate play in the 2010 national title game forced a miss, and Zoubek also grabbed the rebound. For 40 years, Duke was coached by Mike Krzyzewski, who ran out several generations of low-key but reliably dominant teams and won five national titles. Scheyer’s squad is the coolest Duke team since the one with Christian Laettner and Grant Hill that played in the greatest NCAA tournament game of all time; Flagg has looked every bit like the generational talent he was supposed to be, and plays a fun, full-spectrum style. They are probably more fun than those Laettner/Hill teams that won consecutive national titles.
Perhaps your Duke hatred overrides how fun this team is. I wouldn't judge you if that were the case. But despite winning all their tournament games pretty easily—that Arizona victory was the hardest they’ve been pushed—the Blue Devils have been undeniably entertaining even while dominating their competition. I know.
We have maybe gotten a little spoiled in recent years. Saint Peter’s made it to the Elite Eight as a 15 seed in 2022. In 2023, Fairleigh Dickinson upset No. 1 seed Purdue, and teams from Conference USA (Florida Atlantic) and the Mountain West (San Diego State) made it to the Final Four. Even Princeton made a run that year. Last year the ACC team in the Final Four was at least an 11 seed.
The 2025 NCAA men’s basketball tournament, by contrast, has been “clapping the erasers in June” chalky. Every team that advanced to the Final Four is a one-seed, and they’ve all only had to sweat a little. Duke has won almost all its games by double digits. Auburn was having a little trouble with Michigan and promptly went on a 20-2 run. Houston needed a Milos Uzan game-winner on a cool inbounds play to beat Purdue.
Florida’s the only team that should’ve lost a game they won. Texas Tech led by nine with three minutes left in their Elite Eight matchup; the Gators quickly hit three straight threes to tie it. Walter Clayton’s third triple of the game with a minute left put Florida ahead for good. Florida wins like that. Forty-four percent of their shots come from distance. The Gators also generally got good shots despite taking so many threes: Their 36 percent shooting percentage on threes ranked 71st in the nation. They hit 56 percent of shots inside, and don’t draw all that many fouls on offense or defense. They don’t turn it over, or force many turnovers. They rebound 39 percent of their misses, fifth in the country. They play pretty fast.
That makes Florida a great team to watch. The Gators shoot a lot of threes but not too many, and they shoot them pretty well. Todd Golden’s up-tempo offense means the Gators take a lot of shots, and they’ll take them from anywhere on the court. Florida opponents generally don’t shoot many free throws. All this makes for a brisk, busy basketball experience; attend a Florida basketball game and you will be out of there in a little over two hours.
Houston, which plays Duke in Saturday’s semi, is the opposite. They have the fifth-slowest tempo in the nation. They’re kind of weird on offense: The Cougars shoot 40 percent from three, but half their points come inside the arc. The Cougars are much more interesting on defense, where they’re No. 2 in effective field goal percentage, just behind Duke. But Houston’s D does some things Duke’s doesn’t, with top-30 rankings in steals and blocks. Houston’s bruising defense is exhausting for opponents. Tennessee scored just 15 points in the first half. Really: The Cougars' D can be fun to watch.
Auburn was the only team to beat Houston in regulation this year—they did it in November, after a big fight on the team plane—and survived some drama on Sunday. Johni Broome couldn’t miss in the second half, then turned his ankle and hobbled off the court. There was a legit great moment: Fans cheered when Broome came out of the concourse, then amped it up further when it became clear he wasn’t there just to sit on the bench. Broome promptly hit a three after entering the game.
That this is a chalky tournament doesn’t mean it’s been entirely a dull one. This year, at least, the teams in the Final Four have played decently entertaining basketball even in their blowouts. There’s a chance there will be three more entertaining games between the clear four best teams of the 364 in Division I before one of them cuts down the nets. There’s an outside chance at least one of those games will be a classic. (“Outside chance” is a category in the DanPom™ rating system.)
There’s also a higher-than-outside chance (DanPom™) Duke rolls through Houston in one semi and the winner of Florida-Auburn in the final. They might even make you cheer for them as they do it. In just three years since Coach K’s retirement, Scheyer has remade Duke in his own image, and his Blue Devils play some pretty fun basketball in a way that Coach K's generally didn’t. I know. It stinks.
On the upside, there’s this photo on the wire where it looks like Flagg is about to get bonked in the head by the basketball.
And thinking about Jon Scheyer led me to his Wikipedia page, where the photo is from his playing days at Duke and he more or less looks like a toddler.
Ha ha! Scheyer looks competent and annoying, like a classic Duke basketball guy. Watch somebody update it now that he has Duke in the Final Four.
