How Cayden Boozer ‘saved’ Duke basketball in ACC Championship win over Virginia

The Duke staff didn’t intend to play Cayden Boozer for 40 minutes Saturday night, but every time the thought of subbing him out so much as crossed their mind, there were two clear issues to consider.

“We couldn’t take him off,” associate head coach Chris Carrawell told the News & Observer. “First of all, who you gonna put in for him? And then, he played so well, you don’t want to take him out.”

So they didn’t.

Boozer played the entire ACC Championship game for the No. 1 Blue Devils, and scored a career-high 16 points in a 74-70 victory over No. 2 seeded Virginia. Saturday night marked the Blue Devils’ second conference tournament title in a row, and third in four years under coach Jon Scheyer.

And this latest championship came on the back of a freshman who, for most of the year, has come off the bench to play in the shadow of his twin brother.

But not this time.

“Honestly, I thought Cayden completely put us on his back in that first half, the job he did running the show, scoring, defending, really do anything,” Scheyer said in his postgame news conference from the Spectrum Center. “To play 40 minutes against Virginia when they’re pressing you the whole game was just an incredible performance, man. Incredible.”

Then Scheyer paused and glanced at Cam Boozer and Isaiah Evans, who combined for 33 points.

“Cam and Isaiah were just OK,” he said with a chuckle.

‘I just kept attacking’

Cayden, who sat between his two “OK” teammates, allowed himself a brief smile in response to his coach’s jest. But he disagreed with his coach’s assessment that he rescued the team.

If anything, he was just reading the defense and reacting.

“In the beginning of the game, they just weren’t guarding me, so I kept scoring,” Cayden said. “And then, once I get confident, I feel like no one can really stop me. So I just kept attacking. I felt that was pretty much it.”

On his right side, his brother Cam smiled and nodded in approval.

“Yeah, I like that,” Cam said. “That was a great line right there.”

Certainly Cam was thinking about the potential virality of the moment. It seemed like just the clip that might spread across social media by the time they woke up the next day, with Duke fans pouring into the comments to praise the freshman’s confidence.

Gaining confidence at the ACC Tournament

But Cam was also, likely, thinking back to earlier that week. When the team squeaked by Florida State on Thursday night. When the Seminoles defense sagged so far off of Cayden that it had the point guard, frankly, flustered at times during the ACC Tournament quarterfinals.

Still, Cayden finished Thursday night with nine points — none bigger than the offensive rebound and put-back with 1:01 to play that proved to be the game-winning basket. But even after that crucial play, Cayden needed a bit of a pep talk following the win. He said it was his first-ever experience “not being guarded.”

“I think that was just a really important moment for me,” Cayden said Saturday night. “Obviously being spotted and just not really being guarded is a tough situation for anyone to be in. But to be able to have the adversity in the first half of that game and be able to just figure it out in that game, I think was just really important to be prepared for that because it might happen again in the tournament.”

“I think it’s tough when a team spies on you,” Cam said at Duke’s Thursday night press conference. “It messes with your mind a little bit. I was just telling him to play with some confidence, bro. You’re open, shoot it, attack, be aggressive.”

His bro, as it soon turned out, was listening.

In Duke’s next game on Friday night, Cayden set a new career-high in scoring with 16 points in the Blue Devils’ 73-61 rout of Clemson. He matched that total again in Saturday’s ACC Championship game — including a game-altering 14 points in the first half against the Cavs that Carrawell said “saved us.”

‘He has that ‘it’ factor’

The performance, to hear Carrawell tell it, showed Cayden’s growth since the beginning of the season. But the Duke associate coach also felt like he was watching the same 15-year-old kid he saw when he first started recruiting the twins years ago.

“Cayden was always the one where, in the big time moment, he always came through,” Carrawell said. “Same way on his high school, EYBL, USA (teams). And then now, on his level, he has that ‘it’ factor. For him to come through the way he did tonight was incredible.”

With starting point guard Caleb Foster out for the forseeable future, and the NCAA Tournament around the corner, Cayden’s performance carried even more weight.

It also reinforced something Scheyer has said about this roster all season: Duke isn’t built around one player.

Cam, a leading candidate for national player of the year, faced heavy resistance at the rim throughout the championship game — especially in the first half. He finished with 13 points, eight rebounds and eight assists, but was limited before halftime.

“And that’s a ‘bad’ night for him,” Scheyer said. “We’re very spoiled.”

They were spoiled, too, that Cam came to Duke as a package deal.

He’s been the headliner for most of the season, sure. But when Duke needed someone to run the show in Charlotte, it was his brother who answered.

“I would just say I’m super proud of him,” Cam said. “I see all the hard work he puts in and how great of a player he is. For him to come here, two guys down, really step up for us — it should give him tremendous confidence going into the tournament. We’re going to need that from him the rest of the year.

So yeah, good job, bro.”

This story was originally published March 15, 2026 at 5:30 AM.