I never thought it would happen. I’m not going to lie. At the beginning of this season, I never thought this team was good enough. Don’t get me wrong, I knew they were good, but not national title good. Hell, just prior to the tournament I wrote a post about why Duke won’t win the championship.
I was wrong. There is no shame in admitting it. At the very least, a lot of people were too.
I’m going to be posting more on this team, the tournament and the future later this week, but for this post, I just want to focus on this game.
WHAT DID I SEE?
THAT FINAL SHOT
Could you imagine if that went in? If that ball found its way into the basket, Gordan Hayward would have been the king of college basketball folklore. You could forget all about Mario Chalmers, Keith Smart and Lorenzo Charles. Those guys would have had nothing on Heyward if he made that shot. It would have been the half-court shot that slayed the dragon.
Could you imagine? Hell, if Hollywood wrote an ending like that (with the ball going in for the win), I would have dismissed it as being too cheesy. Luckily for Blue Devil nation, it didn’t.
KYLE SINGLER PROBABLY PLAYED HIS LAST GAME…
At least it was a good one. Outside of the Baylor game, Singler has been a stud in the tournament and tonight, he was Duke’s best player. He finished with 19 points, nine boards, two assists and three blocks. Every time Duke needed a basket, he nailed it.
How clutch was he?
You know in baseball, people often gave A-Rod a hard time because he always hit his bombs when the Yankees were up big and never in the clutch? I’m not exactly sure what is the basketball equivalent to that, but let me throw some numbers at you.
Singler made seven shots tonight. In all seven shots, Duke never led by more than two points when he made the shot. In fact, Duke trailed three times when Kyle made his shot, tied once, led by one once and was up two, twice.
For the record, Singler missed six shots. Duke was never trailing when he missed those shots. They were tied once, up one once, up two twice and up four twice.
I do believe this will be Singler’s last game in a Duke uniform. I suspect he’ll declare, but won’t take an agent. But like Henderson last year, he will decide to go. With this great tournament, he has probably moved himself up to the middle of the first-round, just outside of a lottery pick.
As a Duke fan, I obviously want him back. With him, Duke is the preseason No 1 team next year. The question is, how much better is he going to get? Sure he could get moved up a few spots, but he’s never going to be a top-five pick. At the very least, if he gets drafted in the back-half of the first round, he’ll end up on a decent team, instead of a team like the Clippers.
I just think this championship seals the deal. Of course I’ve been wrong so many times before, so there’s that. As of this writing, he says he’s undecided.
SENIORS GO OUT ON TOP
What a way to go out for Brian Zoubek, Lance Thomas and Jon Scheyer. It has been one hell of a ride, hasn’t it? Four years ago, these seniors ended their first year at Duke with a four game slide, including an embarrassing first-round loss to VCU.
The next two years, they had to deal with benchings, injuries, playing out of position and accusations of underachievement, all while their neighbors in Chapel Hill became kings of college basketball. As a fan, I went from wanting national championships to “just beat North Carolina at home, please!”
Yet, they kept getting better and grew as a team. They got healthy and yeah, they also got lucky as teams like Kansas and Kentucky went down early. Yet, after it is all said and done, they are now and will always be part of the Duke legacy. They have a championship, something plenty of great Duke players over the years can’t say. Enjoy it, boys.
SCHEYER DESERVES THIS
Fair or not, Jon’s been the face of Duke’s struggles over the last four years. When Duke failed, he shouldered much of the blame. When Duke won, he never got enough credit. At the end of this season when he slumped, everyone was ready to declare him dead. Yet, that slumped ended and he’s been on fire since late in the Purdue game.
Tonight though, Scheyer was everywhere, doing everything. He scored (15 points, 5-15 shooting). He rebounded (six boards). He dished the ball out (five assists) and just for fun, he got some blocks (two).
ZOUBEK WAS THE X-FACTOR…AGAIN
For the first 20 minutes, Duke got owned on the boards. The smaller Butler Bulldogs were crashing the glass, out-rebounding Duke 22-16. Obviously Coach K sent a kind (I’m sure) message about rebounding to his team at halftime.
In the second, Duke took control. At one point in the second half, Duke had grabbed 19 rebounds to Butler’s six. The Bulldogs finished stronger, but in the second half, Duke won the battle of the glass, 20-10.
Of course this wasn’t about rebounding, it was about Zoubek. Not only did Brian grab many of those second half rebounds, the Zoubeard did three huge things in this game that made the difference.
1) He didn’t foul out. Stunningly, with 10+ minutes to go, Coach K put Zoubek back in the game with four fouls. I never in my wildest dreams thought that Brian could play ten minutes without picking up another foul, especially with the way Hayward was driving to the paint. Yet, Zoubek was able to avoid the foul and be there at the end when it counted.
2) He switch over on Hayward with five seconds left, when Gordan was driving to the right. The play started at the top of the key, Butler down one. Singler was on Hayward. The Butler forward was able to get past Kyle, but he ran right into Zoubek, who got his giant hand up in the air. He forced Hayward to fade away, past the backboard. The shot almost
