Duke’s toughness was tested, again. This time, the Blue Devils were not found wanting
L.J. Cryer dribbled into the heart of Duke’s defense. He looked around for help that didn’t come. He never saw Tyrese Proctor coming.
Proctor stole the ball right out of Cryer’s hands, picked his pocket, took his lunch money. Suddenly, the bullied had become the bully.
There will be no more questions about Duke’s toughness. Houston asked everything of Duke, pushed it to the absolute limit, and it wasn’t the Blue Devils who were found wanting.
In the biggest moment of Duke’s season, the Blue Devils met the challenge. And they’ll reap the reward for their 54-51 win over the top-seeded Cougars: A rematch with N.C. State with nothing less than a trip to the Final Four on the line.
Two years after Duke and North Carolina met in the Final Four, two weeks after N.C. State beat UNC for an ACC title (and beat Duke along the way), the third leg of the Triangle gets its own moment of basketball apocalypse.
But set that aside, for a moment, that colossal internecine battle looming here Sunday in Dallas, an unexpected and incomparable third meeting of two rivals that met only once in the regular season but will collide for a second time in the postseason.
Set that aside, for as long as anyone can, even if the anticipation and trepidation are so thick you could layer it on with a palette knife. (And not just what color tie ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, who wore red for the first game in Dallas and blue for the second, will wear Sunday.)
Because what Duke did Friday night, its toughness tested by an opponent unwilling to give Duke any oxygen at all, exorcised two seasons’ worth of Duke’s demons.
Duke proved exactly what it failed to prove a year ago against Tennessee, that it was not merely a finesse team, as comfortable as it may be in the wide-open spaces of an up-and-down game, but one capable of winning a street fight as well.
This was, in the parlance of Duke’s former coach, a man’s game.
“Just seeing the togetherness, how we didn’t quit out there tonight, that really shows the growth from last year,” Duke forward Kyle Filipowski said. “We remember how upset we were from last year, and we didn’t want to repeat that again. We know we have a great team. We’ve been through so much this year. We just stuck together, and that was the most important thing.”
Duke certainly benefited when in the first half Houston lost Jamal Shead — as good a two-way guard as there is in college basketball — to an ankle injury. But the Cougars were never going to make it easy. Shead or no, Duke was going to have to fight for every inch, earn every shot, contest every rebound.
And the Blue Devils did.
They fell behind 8-0 early and never flinched. They fought. They scrapped. They would not be pushed around. Jeremy Roach played with, essentially, nine fingers after dislocating his left pinkie in the second round, and still scored 14 points, all in the second half. Filipowski hit three 3-pointers, each at the precise moment Duke needed it.
A year after their season ended because they were out-toughed, the Blue Devils measured up to what might be the toughest team in the country, then let their skill and raw talent rise above and win the game. If they hadn’t, they would never have lived it down. But they did, and the way they met this moment is what will be remembered instead.
“Any questions about their mental toughness, any questions about their heart, I think they answered them tonight,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said.
For so much of this season, Duke has been the close-but-not-quite all-stars. The narrow home loss to Arizona early on. The two losses to North Carolina, beaten on their own floor by the kind of sharpshooting antagonist that’s so often worn Duke blue. The loss to N.C. State in Washington, the Blue Devils’ ACC Tournament over before it really started.
Duke has always had the parts, the pieces, the talent. These would-be one-and-dones came back as sophomores to realize that obvious and apparent potential. But the Blue Devils hadn’t been able to put them all together in the kind of moments people remember. Until Brooklyn. Until now.
“We came back to be in this position,” Proctor said. “It’s crazy because we were in the exact same situation as last year.”
And so now Duke gets another shot at redemption, against the ACC champions, and someone’s going to the Final Four, one way or the other. N.C. State earned that chance over the past three weeks. Duke earned it, truly earned it, Friday night.
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This story was originally published March 29, 2024 at 11:16 PM with the headline "Duke’s toughness was tested, again. This time, the Blue Devils were not found wanting."
