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NEWARK, N.J. — Peeking out from beneath the back-to-back 3-pointers by Anthony Dell’Orso in the opening four minutes, sneaking a glance from behind the double-clutch floater by Jaden Bradley that extended Arizona’s early lead shortly thereafter, were the intermittent glimpses of fragility and fool’s gold that seemed destined — desperate, even — to undermine any bid for an upset at Prudential Center on Thursday night. To drain the life from three separate fan bases whose allegiances here at the Sweet 16 were temporarily aligned and fused with shared disdain toward Duke, the top seed in the East Regional and a perennial national championship contender. That the Blue Devils’ starting lineup boasts three potential lottery picks, including presumptive No. 1 selection Cooper Flagg, a five-star freshman sensation and the front-runner to be named Naismith College Player of the Year, has effectively bathed the season with inevitability.
So it hardly mattered that Arizona, seeded fourth, made six of its first nine shots to cobble together a five-point lead by the 14:27 mark. It felt irrelevant that Duke, which utilized 10 players in the first half alone, was momentarily hamstrung by foul trouble to starting center Khaman Maluach — another one of those eventual lottery picks — and backup Patrick Ngongba, which forced head coach Jon Scheyer to insert half-healthy forward Maliq Brown, who hasn’t played since suffering an injury in the ACC Tournament on March 13.
Even when noted Duke killer Caleb Love, a transfer from North Carolina who had beaten the Blue Devils more times (five) than he’d lost to them (four), buried a gutsy 3-pointer from NBA range that improbably knotted the game with 46 seconds remaining in the first half, the split seconds of panic were soon abated. Freshman forward Kon Knueppel — yet another of those lottery picks — answered with a triple of his own after Scheyer drew up a beautiful play during the preceding timeout. And when Flagg punctuated the half by rattling home a 3-pointer from the March Madness logo as time expired, pushing Duke ahead by two possessions, the arena roared with equal parts delight and awe.
“Let’s f- go, man!” Flagg screamed after the shot went in, his fists clenched and forearms bulging near midcourt, teammates swiftly arriving to mob him. “Let’s f- go!”
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And sure enough, when the Blue Devils returned from the locker room with an immediate 8-2 spurt that extended their lead to double digits, the only thing Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd could do was call timeout fewer than three minutes into the second half. By then, Lloyd’s team had bricked a 3-pointer off the backboard and watched Maluach, the 7-foot-2, 250-pound unicorn, guide an off-target alley-oop into the basket using only his right hand, absorbing a foul along the way and swishing the ensuing free throw. By then, Flagg had penetrated the 3-point arc and flipped a no-look pass to Sion James for a corner triple that gouged another hole in the Arizona dam.
Duke would go on to score 22 of the first 31 points in the second half, including nine by Maluach on the interior, to pull away from the Wildcats — and eventually hang on — for a 100-93 victory, setting the stage for an Elite Eight matchup with second-seeded Alabama on Saturday night. Flagg finished with 30 points, six rebounds and seven assists in one of his most well-rounded performances of the season. And now the Blue Devils are one win away from reaching their first Final Four under Scheyer, who is navigating his third season since becoming the handpicked successor to Hall-of-Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski.
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To watch Scheyer’s team distance itself from another quality opponent was to recognize the flimsy foundation on which Arizona’s early competitiveness was built, with the Wildcats hemorrhaging effort on seemingly every offensive possession. The physical discrepancy between these two teams was obvious from the moment they convened for the opening tip, at which point a Duke team that has the tallest roster in college basketball towered over an opponent that lost its starting center to a season-ending injury over the winter. Not a single player in the Blue Devils’ entire rotation was shorter than 6-foot-5 on Thursday night — let alone the starting lineup — and that suffocating blend of pterodactyl wingspans with unexpected physical maturity, especially from a group that relies so heavily on freshmen, kept pushing Arizona deeper and deeper beyond the arc. They forced the Wildcats to attempt 14 3-pointers in the first half alone and 26 overall, with the 12 makes providing more or less the only ballast to keep the underdogs afloat.
Nearly every attempt by Arizona to breach Duke’s interior defense resulted in strained faces and pained bodies, such is the physical toll of playing against Scheyer’s lineup. There was a moment when Bradley, a 12-point-per-game scorer, pivoted helplessly in circles while searching for an angle from which to hoist a shot over Flagg, his effort ending with a hopeless clang. The lithe frame of Dell’Orso, who never scored after making two 3s in the opening minutes, stood no chance of turning the corner on dribble drives. So much of the scoring burden fell to Love, who poured in a season-high 35 points, that he attempted five shots in a stretch of seven total attempts for the Wildcats during the second half, his team falling behind by as many as 17 points in that stanza before rallying to single digits down the stretch. Arizona finished minus-12 for points in the paint and missed 11 of 21 layups against Duke’s gargantuan front line.
Which is why it felt so fitting that on the game’s most important possession — the Wildcats trailing, 93-86, with 1:51 to go and needing a basket to keep their hopes of an Elite Eight appearance alive — Flagg was perfectly positioned to wall off what might have been an easy layup for Carter Bryant against any other team. Bryant didn’t even try to shoot, passing instead to teammate Henri Veesaar, a 7-foot, 225-pound sophomore. And there waiting for Veesaar was the even larger Maluach, his arms extended to force an ugly shot in traffic that never stood a chance.
The Blue Devils marched on to the Elite Eight.
Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Cohen13.
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