Duke focused on the moment after ACC tournament win

DONALD WATKINS | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Duke's Blue Devils hoist the ACC championship trophy after beating Louisville 73-62 Saturday at Spectrum Center. Duke (31-3) won the title despite injuries to forward/center Maliq Brown and Cooper Flagg that kept them out for the semifinal and final.

Duke showed they were a collective unit over three days in Charlotte.

After national player of the year contender Cooper Flagg went down in the quarterfinals, it could have been a short stay. Other players stepped up in a big way, and the Blue Devils found themselves cutting down the nets after beating Louisville 73-62.

Trailing 38-33 at halftime, Duke coach Jon Scheyer didn’t feel his team showed the toughness to win.

“Our guys responded,” he said. “They knew it, and I thought they came out with just a different edge to them in the start of the second half. I think the thing we've learned in some of these games, just the value of every possession 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. The value of just getting rebounds is huge and we got rebounds in the second half… we got loose balls, and I think that’s something we had to go through to really understand postseason basketball is different.”

The Blue Devils were also without forward/center Maliq Brown, who dislocated his shoulder in the quarterfinal. Being down two key players over three straight days was not an easy feat.

“It says a lot,” center Kahman Maluach said. “Having two guys down, especially with Maliq and Cooper being out, says a lot about our team and our toughness, and says a lot about other guys stepping up in big moments, especially like how we stepped up in this tournament.”

Duke (31-3) will await where they are headed in the NCAA Tournament. Most analysts have the Blue Devils as a No. 1 seed, and with Auburn losing in the SEC semifinals, may end up No. 1 overall.

The Blue Devils won the ACC regular season, the tournament championship and have proven they have one of the best rosters in the country. When asked if success for this team is a Final Four berth or bust, Scheyer did not agree.

“I just don’t think of it that way,” he said. “I’m not running from that, either. Don’t get me wrong. That's what we want to do. We’ve approached this whole year – finish what’s right in front of you. So, for us, what was right in front of us was tonight’s game. We’ll find out where we’re going tomorrow. Obviously excited to see that and figure that out, and then we’ll finish the next game and then go from there. But I don't want to make any proclamations of what success or not. For me, success is making sure we’re connected, and we do everything that we possibly can to put ourselves in that position.”

DONALD WATKINS | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Duke guard Tyrese Proctor dribbles through the Louisville defense in the Blue Devils' ACC finals win. Duke is an odds-on favorite to earn a top seed at next week's NCAA Tournament.

The Blue Devils reached the Elite 8 of last season before losing to North Carolina State. It left a bad taste in Scheyer’s mouth, but the lesson was valuable.

“March 31 last year was a terrible feeling,” he said. “In my life, I can remember the first time, even in high school, I missed a game-winning shot to go to a state championship game and that led to so much growth. For me, last year was the same thing. So, April 1 hit, and I wanted to make sure I could be the best I could for these guys.

“It started with learning and reading. I came across something where it was just a philosophy about Kaizen, a Japanese philosophy basically talking about getting better every day, and not getting caught up in results, but being caught up in the process and what you’re doing every day to get better.”

It even carried over to how the Blue Devils break each huddle. 

“I told our team right away, I believe if we approach it the right way, one day at a time,” Scheyer said, “when we have opportunities to win a championship like this, we’ll be ready for it, not to put up day one San Antonio, or ACC regular season championship, or ACC tournament championship and our guys have taken it to heart. We said the entire preseason, and on the first day of practice, I broke our huddle with something else, and they said, ‘no, no, kaizen.’ And so we’ve kept that, and that’s been something we say every day.”

Comments