How Duke basketball’s Dame Sarr experienced March Madness in real time
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- Dame Sarr watched March Madness on his phone before playing in the NCAA.
- Duke trailed by 11 at half, rallied and won 71-65 after defensive tweaks.
- A blunt film session and team leadership highlighted errors before facing TCU.
Duke’s Dame Sarr’s earliest sports memories growing up in Italy are of soccer, of World Cups, of heroes such as Paolo Maldini and Sandro Tonali.
But when he was 13, he found a new interest: basketball, and then learned of this American March spectacle known as the NCAA Tournament.
“It was just a different type of basketball, with the hype about March and about this March Madness,” Sarr said Friday of the NCAAs. “I’d watch on my phone and I was seeing all these upsets and coming to understand that anything can happen.”
And then he came to Duke. Then he found himself in his first NCAA Tournament game. He found himself Thursday in the middle of what was shaping up as one of those huge upsets as Siena, the No. 16 seed in the East Region, was taking it to No. 1 Duke.
For Sarr, a freshman, everything was happening in real time.
“It’s for sure different when you’re in the game,” Sarr said, smiling.
“But I have such faith in this team and the heart we have. I feel like we put ourselves in a bad position but we also put ourselves in a good position.”
The Blue Devils trailed by 11 points at the half and 13 early in the second half – a bad position for Duke. But they switched up their defenses, rebounded better, started hitting shots, got to the foul line and fought back for a 71-65 victory.
The Devils moved on to the second round to face Texas Christian on Saturday at 5:15 p.m. in what figures to be a more physical, possession-by-possession battle.
“It was a wakeup call for us,” Sarr said Friday. “We’d have a run and we were still down 7, 9 points. That’s not an easy situation when your whole season is on the line. But I’m really proud of the way we came out in the second half knowing that we needed to compete at an elite level.”
All that was discussed at length, and bluntly, during an intense team film session.
“A great film session,” Sarr said. “We were able to see what we were doing wrong.
“It was us. They were making 3’s but they were in our paint, and rebounding. Yeah, they were making shots they don’t normally make but the reality of it was they were making easy layups and getting offensive rebounds.”
Again, the film session addressed all that.
“We could have lost the game but we won the game, “ Sarr said. “In March it doesn’t matter how you win as long as you win. It was about learning about what we did wrong.”
Duke coach Jon Scheyer said Friday that his team appeared to be lacking the usual energy as the game began and weren’t the “aggressors.” Sarr did his part to try and enliven his teammates and often was seen at the bench during the first half being loud, active.
“We were being quiet,” Sarr said. “I tried to pick everybody up, pick the energy up, I said at halftime that we were being quiet and not talking to each other. We were draining each other’s energy and not giving each other energy.”
But that was Thursday. Against the Horned Frogs, the No. 9 seeds in the East Region, the Devils will be facing a Big 12 team Saturday that faced the three other No. 1 seeds in the NCAA field – Arizona, Michigan and Florida – during the regular season.
“Yeah, we beat Florida. That was a good win for us,” TCU coach Jamie Dixon said Friday. “The Michigan game, we should have won. We were up the whole game and didn’t get it done down the stretch. Then Arizona got off to a good start against us, and we fought back (before losing.)
“I remember those games well, but you’re kind of in this league that we’re in, in the Big 12, and you could go down the list. You talk about three No. 1s, but then we could talk about No. 2s, and No. 3s, and No. 4s that we’ve played, too. You’re kind of built for it when you get into this tournament.”
Duke associate head coach Chris Carrawell called the Frogs a “junkyard dog” team that likes to pound teams in the paint while mixing in 3’s. Like Duke, he said, TCU crashes the glass and a key for the Devils will be “putting bodies on people.”
The Horned Frogs are 23-11 after their 66-64 first-round win over Ohio State that had TCU take a nice lead, lose it, then surge back at the end. Xavier Edmonds’ hook shot won it with four seconds left.
“You see everything in the Big 12,” TCU senior guard Jayden Pierre said. “A lot of projected lottery picks and a lot of great teams, a lot of top 10 teams, top 25 teams. I feel like we were very battle tested. The Big 12 is the best league in the country. I feel like it’s really prepared us for this moment.”
Sarr said his parents came from Italy to see the ACC Tournament, then returned home. He said they contacted him after the Siena game “to make sure I was good and I was feeling good.”
All good, Sarr told them. Duke won, so all good.
This story was originally published March 20, 2026 at 5:39 PM.
