Even without Cooper Flagg, Duke Meets All the Requirements to Win the ACC Title The Blue Devils secured their place in the national championship contest by winning a league that had previously been weak.
Charlotte— During this week’s men’s ACC tournament, the Duke Blue Devils unexpectedly experienced the phases of grieving.
Following such injuries, the squad had to mount a fierce comeback—the biggest of the season—to defeat the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, which quickly followed denial and depression. Anger was also evident during a number of frustrating moments against the rival North Carolina Tar Heels in the semifinals, when a collapse was only prevented by an unintentional lane violation.
There was some haggling behind closed doors, and in the end, Flagg decided to miss the remainder of his stay in the Queen City in order to recover for the tournament that is far more important the following week.
But at last there was acceptance. Resolve arrived. Hunger arrived. The team won a trophy (and some net clippings) after defeating the Louisville Cardinals 73–62 on Saturday night, marking their second tournament victory in Jon Scheyer’s three seasons as head coach.
When we have chances to win a championship like this, I think we’ll be prepared if we take it one day at a time, as I told our players straight away [at the beginning of the season], Scheyer stated. “Not to mention the ACC regular-season championship, the ACC tournament championship, or Day 1 San Antonio.” It has been taken seriously by our guys.
For the Blue Devils, who dominated the league in spectacular fashion, winning both the ACC regular-season and tournament titles seemed appropriate Duke
Although the league’s weakness this season was widely discussed—and it was undoubtedly historically poor—the superbly assembled roster was powerless to change that. They had no choice but to go play outside. The result of this most recent experiment with greatness was almost running the table.
Duke suffered its only league loss since Thanksgiving, against the Clemson Tigers, which helped rather than harmed the team’s reputation. Earlier in the season, Duke lost twice in a two-week span. The Blue Devils are the only team in the nation to qualify for the Big Dance ranked in the top five on both offensive and defensive efficiency, and they have only scored fewer than 74 points twice since the year 2025 began.
In addition to being the nation’s top team with a possibly generational talent leading a surprisingly likeable group, everyone knew they were excellent enough for casual fans to watch if they could see past the show’s typical stance as a sinister empire.
However, anytime such dominance is demonstrated in college basketball, it frequently becomes a talking point about the need to be tested in March, as though adversity is the last thing each team needs to succeed over the course of the following three weekends. Whether they were looking for it or not, it’s safe to say they found some during a final that hung back and forth between the two teams until the very end.
“They haven’t shot it very well over the last two days of the tournament, but they are a very, very good shooting team, and our number one key to the game was defend the three,” stated Louisville coach Pat Kelsey.
They made things tough because they have strong players and a good plan, but for a spell, it felt like they were losing control of the ball and all of those things were going in. However, you have to give them credit for their shots. Their victory tonight was well-earned. Their team was superior.
The problem with this Duke team is that they performed flawlessly during this week’s testing. Despite the initial concerns on Thursday afternoon, the Blue Devils’ victory in the ACC tournament with Flagg in warmups and reduced to being the sport’s highest-paid cheerleader for the next 72 hours should infuriate other national title contenders even more.
It’s frightening, don’t you? guard Isaiah Evans said. “We have a lot of pieces, and we’re going to be rocking and rolling once we’re all completely healthy.” This was especially noticeable early in the second half when the Cardinals attempted to increase their lead from 38 to 33 at the half.
Duke spent the remainder of the subsequent media break concentrating on adjusting its defence after guard Terrence Edwards Jr. made a jumper to beat the shot clock just before the 15-minute mark. With composure, Scheyer gazed at every rotation member and urged more unity. Several times, assistant coach Will Avery, who is familiar with teams who aim to win national titles, put up a whiteboard to discuss more assignments.
At the Spectrum Centre, techno music blared over the uncomfortably seated members of the heavily pro-Duke crowd, but each player nodded in agreement and broke the huddle with expressions of unmistakable resolve.
Whatever was said obviously had a profound effect since Duke took control of the game with a 20–6 run during the following seven minutes. “I believe that our offence wasn’t playing as well as it has all year. With a team-high 19 points towards the end, Tyrese Proctor stated, “We let that affect us defensively.” “I believe we were each playing defence. I believe that after we returned to our starting position as a team, we were very different in the second half, which changed the course of the game.
In addition, the Blue Devils’ entire squad contributed to the spark, which is encouraging for March Madness since it means they won’t be depending too much on a disabled Flagg to get back to his national player of the year level. Brown, an agile rebounder, was replaced by big man Patrick Ngongba II, who came up huge with more minutes after missing some of the preseason due to a foot issue.
A 12–0 run that gave the Blue Devils the lead again for good was highlighted by back-to-back threes from Sion James and Proctor on the other end, while his blocked shot right before the under-12 break caused a loud cheer across the arena.
James played more minutes than normal and made a significant contribution on both ends. He scored 15 points and made both of his attempts from outside the arc. In addition to his scoring spree, his active hands significantly contributed to keeping Edwards to just seven points the remainder of the game, following the Cardinals guard’s 22-point performance in the opening 20 minutes.
In Flagg’s absence, offensive spacing changed dramatically, and Duke also came up with a solution. As the tournament progressed, Kon Knueppel, who scored a career-high 28 points in the rally against Georgia Tech in the quarterfinals, had less and fewer open looks as defences adapted to not having to worry about a possible No. 1 NBA draft pick holding the ball.
This compelled Duke’s “other” outstanding freshmen to re-discover aspects of his game that might be useful in the coming weeks, especially his ability to drive the lane and make layups.
“I didn’t feel like I made an effort to make it more intense or anything. After scoring 18 points and pulling down eight rebounds against the Cards, Knueppel noted, “I just tried to make the right play.” I was aware of some of the load, particularly the minutes, when Cooper was away. I had a lot more to play. It wasn’t attempting to achieve something extraordinary; it was just trying to be crisp.
It appeared that his teammates put such insane stuff off until later. When the clock struck midnight and Knueppel was declared the Most Outstanding Player of the ACC tournament, the other Duke players crowded him on stage and made him speak.
Although the typically quiet Wisconsin native didn’t say much, she did deviate a little from the one-day-at-a-time mentality that Scheyer has attempted to inculcate since moving the child south to Durham, North Carolina.
He remarked, “Two down, one to go.” The Duke supporters, employees, and large groups of relatives still gathered around the court were ecstatic. A clamour finally filled the arena as others started yelling, “We want six!” in reference to the program’s five national titles.
It wasn’t easy for the Blue Devils to achieve that point, but after dominating the ACC once more this week, they might be even more equipped to score those goals as they aim for even bigger rewards in the future.
