Duke watches its own nightmare happen to No. 2 seed Kentucky, then wakes up in time
It was an unexpectedly late night for Duke’s players on Thursday. Five months ago, they opened their season with a win over Kentucky. Before the Blue Devils even opened the NCAA tournament, they gathered at the team hotel downtown to stay up and watch Kentucky’s season end.
The biggest upset of this tournament’s first round, a blue-blooded No. 2 seed with national championship aspirations losing to a small northeastern 15th seed from a one-bid league, is not an unfamiliar scenario to the Blue Devils – only a decade and two days have passed since Lehigh did the same to them – and loomed over second-seeded Duke again.
But watching Kentucky crash out may have steeled Duke’s nerves for Friday. There was never a moment against Cal State Fullerton when the Blue Devils looked like screwing this up, or even wavering, even with the unacknowledged but obvious pressure of Mike Krzyzewski’s career hanging over their heads, as it will until it ends, (sixth) win or lose.
“I mean, we all watched the game last night,” Duke’s Wendell Moore said. “So for us, I mean, obviously we didn’t want it to happen to us as well. So all of us guys knew we had to lock in. This is March. You never really know what can happen. So we didn’t want to be put in that position where the fate of our game was in someone else’s shoes.”
This 78-61 win was not a perfect performance, nor one lacking areas for targeted improvement in the intervening day before Duke faces the winner of Friday’s late game between Michigan State and Davidson. It was more than good enough, perhaps not a total page-turner from that grim stretch that led into this, from the loss to North Carolina at Cameron through the ACC tournament underachievement, but better.
Better than the fate that befell Kentucky.
Just as there is with the other blue locally, there’s always an informal running comparison between Duke blue and Big Blue, whether it’s the coveted No. 1 recruiting class or the fact that Mike Krzyzewski and John Calipari both went the one-and-done route at about the same time or just the way these two swaggering titans of college basketball tend to bump shoulders when they pass in metaphorical hallways.
Watching Kentucky get its comeuppance was both a surprise and a wake-up call for Duke’s players, just as three hard days of practice allowed them to refocus after the loss to Virginia Tech – which also failed to advance out of the first round.
“The season is so long, and they are a young group,” Krzyzewski said. “So when they accomplished and won the regular season, I thought they took a breath — a deep breath. Then we had my screwy weekend and then right away three games in the ACC. There wasn’t really a time to recalibrate, and I thought we did that this week. Again, it was good enough for tonight. Hopefully we can build on it.”
In the final moments Friday night, with Joey Baker and Jaylen Blakes running out the clock, the Duke partisans sitting directly behind the bench started chanting “We want six! We want six!”
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Whether they meant six wins or a sixth title is moot. Duke still has a long way to go. Physically. Mentally. Technically. Geographically. Emotionally. Defensively, still.
But there’s equally something to be said for taking care of business in the first round, especially in a tournament where that’s been anything but a given. The Blue Devils are alive and far more of their peers than usual are not.
“We beat a great team,” Moore said. “For us to get to where we want to get to, we have to beat another great team and another one and another one. Again, we’ve just got to keep doing it here.”
A journey of six wins starts with a single step, and this was a step Duke has tripped over before, a step that tripped up Kentucky. Not this time. Duke watched its nightmare happen to someone else, then woke up in time.
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This story was originally published March 18, 2022 at 10:36 PM.
