By AARON BEARD AP Basketball Writer
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Up by double figures in the second half at the Final Four, closing in on the chance to play for yet another national championship, Duke was right where it had worked all season to be.
What happened next was unforgettable, history of the most painful kind.
Up 14 with 8 1/2 minutes left, the Blue Devils improbably faded down the stretch, done in by Houston’s relentless fight to stay in a game that had frequently seemed on the verge of getting away. There were missed shots and miscues. An inability to get stops. And even their reliable star — Associated Press national player of the year Cooper Flagg — couldn’t save the Blue Devils on a contested late shot when they suddenly faced a late deficit.
By the final horn, the Cougars had scored the game’s last nine points in the last 33 seconds for a 70-67 victory Saturday night in the second semifinal.
“It’s heartbreaking, it’s incredibly disappointing,” third-year coach Jon Scheyer said. “There’s a lot of pain that comes with this. That’s what the tournament is all about.”
It was as abrupt as it was shocking, the final horn triggering a sound that can only be described as jubilation crashing into disbelief running throughout the Alamodome. The push for the Blue Devils’ sixth NCAA title was over, along with the first Final Four trip of Scheyer’s brief tenure in what was beginning to feel like a coronating moment after taking over for retired Hall of Famer Mike Krzyzewski.
“It was an incredible season,” Flagg said, fighting back tears after a 27-point showing. “Incredible people, incredible relationships that I’m going to have for the rest of my life. Didn’t end the way we wanted it to, but still an incredible year.”
Duke (35-4) went from being in firm control all night to having a desperate final possession after LJ Cryer’s last two free throws with 3.7 seconds left, leaving the Blue Devils only Sion James’ full-court heave for a try at a tying 3 with no timeouts left. But after a deflection-forced scramble, the ball ended up in Tyrese Proctor’s hands with time only for Proctor to turn and flail it toward the basket.
The ball missed everything as the horn sounded.
That sent James crumpling to midcourt in anguish, only to look around and realize he had to quickly spring up because the Cougars’ bench was sprinting his way to celebrate a stunning victory. J’Wan Roberts, Houston’s burly 23-year-old forward playing in his fifth season, went running over to Cougars fans near the edge of the court to scream in triumphant joy while popping the front of his jersey.
As Houston’s players celebrated, the 18-year-old Flagg walked with his head down toward the edge of the elevated court for the stairs to down to the tunnel and to the locker room. His teammates followed with stunned expressions, along with freshman big man Khaman Maluach having tears streaming down his face.
Worse, the path for the Blue Devils to their locker-room sanctuary was through the heaviest concentration of Houston fans in the arena. So Duke made its way off amid a sea of red-clad fans tauntingly waving goodbye and capturing the moment with their phones.
It didn’t seem likely that the only team to rank inside KenPom’s top five for adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency would find itself in that position. But there were hiccups, small mistakes that seemingly compounded against a tough team that absolutely refused to back down.
The sequence that stood out was Proctor missing the front end of a 1-and-1 free throw with Duke up just one, then Flagg fouling Roberts while trying to reach over his box out. Roberts, who came into the game shooting 62.5%, calmly made both with 19.6 seconds left for a 68-67 lead.
Then, after a timeout, Flagg got the ball with a chance to attack Roberts. The versatile 6-foot-9 forward widely projected to become the No. 1 overall NBA pick drove the left side, then turned for a fading shot in the lane over Roberts’ outstretched hand.
The shot was short, the ball bouncing off the front of the rim and landing with the Cougars to set up Cryer’s last free throws to cap his own huge night (26 points).
“Trust Cooper 100 times out of 100 times,” James said. “I had a chance to get the offensive rebound and didn’t get there in time.”
But it was far more than just a shot, something Flagg alluded to in the postgame news conference. It was a not-precise handling of a defensive switch between Flagg and James that gave Emanuel Sharp enough space to bury a 3-pointer that brought Houston within 67-64 with 32.4 seconds left.
Or the ensuing inbounds pass, when James tried to lob it to Flagg against a 6-2 defender Mylik Wilson against the Cougars’ fullcourt pressure. But Wilson deflected the ball to create the turnover, and Joseph Tugler’s flying-in dunk off a miss quickly closed the gap to 67-66.
And the seeds were planted even earlier than that, notably with Duke leading 59-45 with 8:17 left and a chance to strengthen its grasp on the game. But Houston instead ran off 10 straight points, fittingly starting with a 3-pointer from Cryer, that changed the trajectory of the final minutes.
That’s why Scheyer seemed more bothered by his team’s defensive play — the Cougars had 42 second-half points and 13 of their 19 second-chance points after the break — than Duke’s offense sputtering to nine points and one basket in the final 10 minutes.
And just like that, what looked like a title march had become a time of painful reflection — with months more of it to come.
“Obviously as a coach, I’m reflecting right now what else I could’ve said or done to help our guys at the end there,” Scheyer said. “That’s the thing that kills me the most.”
