‘A war:’ No. 1 Duke vs. No. 2 Alabama among best Elite Eight matchups we’ve had in NCAA Tournament history

NEWARK, N.J. — Duke hasn’t faced a team that looks like Alabama.

Alabama hasn’t seen a team that looks like Duke.

We might be in for a great one at the Prudential Center on Saturday night. 

The top two seeds are the ones who remain in the East Region, just as it is in the South (Auburn, Michigan State) and the Midwest (Houston, Tennessee). Out in the West, things have gotten mildly out of hand: No. 1 Florida is also still on the table, with that rascally No. 3 seed, Texas Tech, the only team preventing a full-blown chalk sweep in the regional finals. A tournament as favorites-dominated as this one deprives us of the charming deep tournament run that we’ve grown accustomed to, but the exchange is worth it.

Those other three Elite Eight matchups could be so competitive, we might get the best regional-final Saturday/Sunday ever.

The best of them all is happening here in Jersey, though. Duke-Alabama is the best Elite Eight matchup, going in, since Zion Williamson-led Duke played (and lost to) Michigan State in 2019. If the teams play to their best, it’s got a chance to be considered among the best Elite Eight games ever. Almost definitely shy of the best — Duke 104, Kentucky 103 in the 1992 East Regional final — but maybe something just a notch below.

“We know it’s going to be a war,” Duke freshman center Khaman Maluach said. 

Hopefully one that’s won on the run. We rarely get a regional final with two teams this good on offense. Alabama hit 113 points vs. BYU in this building on Thursday; Duke ticked exactly 100 in beating Arizona. The potential for potent offense and powerful performances is palpable from a pair of programs that were ranked high in the preseason (Bama No. 2, Duke No. 7) and have stayed steady for the most part over the past four-plus months.

How much will the battle-tested factor be a factor? Consider: This is Alabama’s seventh game against a top-10 KenPom team. Duke? Only its second. But Duke ranks No. 1 at KenPom — and has the second-highest efficiency margin in that metric’s history. Alabama is sixth at KenPom; the Tide have faced every team ranked ahead of them, checking Duke off the list when the game tips Saturday night (8:39 p.m ET on TBS). 

Duke and Alabama are both good enough to strut to a national title. Yet here we are, getting this game before the Final Four.

“It’s the hardest game to win,” said Duke coach Jon Scheyer of a regional final, “each team has great momentum going into this game. No matter who you play, each team has won three games in a row. And then obviously you’re an inch away from the promised land, going to a Final Four. I think with that at stake, it brings out really high-level basketball, desperation, the competitive level.” 

2025 March Madness predictions: NCAA bracket expert picks against the spread, Elite Eight odds for Saturday

Chip Patterson

A game this big prompts one question after another, mysteries soon to be uncovered. Will Duke defensive dynamo Maliq Brown, recently back from a shoulder injury, be a game-changing factor for the Blue Devils? Can Mark Sears, fresh off a lava-hot shooting performance against BYU, go for 25-plus against Duke’s size and switchability? Can Alabama win if it doesn’t get to at least 75 points? Can Duke win if Alabama gets to 90? How does the still-underrated Kon Knueppel factor into this game? Does he wind up being the guy who plays best, or is that going to be Tide forward Grant Nelson, who seems quietly waiting on his moment? Is it possible for Cooper Flagg to actually be even better than he was against Arizona, and if not, can Alabama win this game if Flagg plays better than his averages (19.0 ppg, 7.5 rpg, 4.3 apg, 1.4 spg, 1.3 bpg)?

This will be the first meeting between Duke and Alabama in the tournament, and at the heart of a head-to-head is a two-pronged question: Is it easier to contain the near-uncontainable Cooper Flagg than it is to slow down the highest-scoring offense in college basketball? The answer to that could give us the winner.

“I’m going to say it’s harder to hold Cooper under his averages because there’s a way to take the three away from us,” Crimson Tide coach Nate Oats said Friday.  “We’re going to have to do our best. But he’s also one of those guys that, I mean, you’re not going to hold him down to 10 points. That’s just not happening.”

Alabama is coming off a historic showing against BYU; the team’s 25-of-51 3-point display was the most triples (by four) in an NCAA Tournament game ever, and its 49% hit rate was also the best percentage with at least 40 attempts in a March Madness game. Despite that magma-level shooting, the reality is Alabama is not an elite 3-point outfit. It averages 35.6% from beyond the arc, ranking 75th in the country. It launches plenty of them, but its ability to score is based much more off its top-ranked tempo: 75.2 possessions per game. 

That leads to a lot of paint points. Alabama is a 60.1% shooting team inside the arc, which ranks third nationally. It’s more likely that’s where this game is won or lost, rather than the 3-point line. In addition to leading the nation in scoring (91.4 points per game), Alabama’s 42.7 rebounds per contest is also better than every other team in college hoops. 

“If you want to take the 3 away from us, you can,” Oats said. “We’ve also played where we’ve scored almost 70 points in the paint too for teams that are just dead set on [doing that]. So, when people ask me how many 3s do you want to get up, well, it depends on how you want to guard us. … If you want to completely run us off the line, build off every drive, we’ll try to go score 70, 75 points in the paint.”

Alabama and Duke combined to light up the scoreboard with 213 points on Thursday night. Alabama has been blazing: 94.3 ppg in this tournament. Duke’s 94.0 points average through its first three tourney games is a program record. This is the first Elite Eight game wherein both teams are putting up better than 90 per game since 1989, and even more fun: The last time any NCAA Tournament game featured two teams that scored 100 points the prior outing was back in the 1992 Final Four (Duke vs. Indiana), when both hit the century mark in the regional finals. 

If there’s a real edge for Duke, it’s this: The Blue Devils are averaging 5.7 turnovers in their past three games. That’s the lowest rate of any team to make a Sweet 16 since 2010. Alabama does not force turnovers, ranking 352nd in TO rate out of 364 teams (13.4%). Duke, the top-rated per-possession offense in the sport, is going to get its opportunities. 

“Clearly they’re a high-powered offense and a great team. We know it’s going to be a big-time game,” Scheyer said.

Let’s certainly hope so. With these two not having faced another team like what they’ve been assigned here, it does allow for the possibility of a fantastically close game that’s rapt by big plays. 

“Our last seven games in the SEC really prepared us for games like this,” Alabama All-American Mark Sears said. 

Alabama’s go-go-go-go-go offense can’t be replicated in practice, but neither can Flagg’s unique skill set, Maluach’s height — and even Duke’s size. This is literally a huge team. You don’t really know what you’re going up against until you’re actually going up against it.

Flagg statistically had the best game of any freshman ever in the tournament against Arizona, yet Sears was but one more 3 away from history as well. His 10 treys led to 34 points, in addition to eight assists and three steals.

With Sears going for 30-plus and eight dimes, in addition Flagg hitting 30 and having seven assists against BYU, Saturday is the first game in tournament history that will pit opposing players coming off games with at least 30 points and five assists. Sears was the preseason national player of the year here at CBS Sports. Flagg has already won the Oscar Robertson National Player of the Year award.

It’s the exact kind of matchup we would’ve hoped for in the preseason to wind up happening in the Final Four. 

But instead, it’s one of the best Elite Eight head-to-heads on paper we’ve ever seen. Duke is in a regional final for the 25th time, third most in history. This Alabama’s third Elite Eight ever, and it’s second straight after making the Final Four last season.

A year ago, Duke got to the Elite Eight after maneuvering past top-seeded Houston, which lost its best player, Jamal Shead, mid-game to a knee injury. The Blue Devils were squared up against NC State, the 11-seed that was on an all-time run, but were big favorites against their ACC rivals. Instead, the Wolfpack with plenty of space to breathe: 76-64. That’s lingered with Scheyer for 363 days.

“Every decision we’ve made since March 31st of last year was to put ourselves in this same position and have the opportunity to capitalize,” Scheyer said, referring to an offseason overhaul focused around size and switchability to complement the starry class of 2025 recruiting coup. 

A Duke loss to Alabama would be reasonable — but still a failure for this team. This players have publicly set the bar to winning a national title and nothing less. Alabama losing would be similarly disappointing. The Tide making back-to-back Final Fours would elevate the program’s status in the modern hierarchy of college basketball. Stakes this high induce pressure and anticipation that’s at a championship-game level. And that’s essentially what we have here, only two rounds earlier. It’s an Elite Eight game that may well produce the eventual national champion. You cannot ask for anything bigger, or better, out of a regional final than No. 1 Duke vs. No. 2 Alabama.