San Antonio – Inside Seaing Silence Duke The jacket, the echo of the door slammed, was intermittently undulating. Every time the player or employee plunged into the dressing room of neighboring coaches, the door bang at night he spoke like a siren.
There is nothing to prepare a team for an emotional spiral that comes up with a six -point lead in the last 35 seconds. After Houston Scored the last nine points of the game in 33 seconds to stun the Dukes 70-67 On Saturday evening in Final Four accompanied the silence accompanying Blue Devils attempts to process it.
The players wandered quietly to catch a piece of pizza from one of the 10 boxes stacked high through Powerrade Cooler. They stared down at their phones to avoid eye contact with the persistent media. One walk came back from the shower with tears in his eyes. He wrote another in the magazine with a pencil.
They played as a six -point lead could disappear in less than 20 seconds. But even after failure of incoming incoming, missing and mental gaffes, two key moments in the last 20 seconds from the star Freshman Cooper Flagg – Foul and Miss- finished stunning melting.
Flagg’s missed 12-Naha Jumper, with the Duke ending with one point, will be a game that will live forever in repetition. Duke had a chance to take control of the game and stop the bleeding; The time limit was called with 17 seconds remaining. Blue Devils cleaned up for Flagg that got an insulating match with Houston for six years J’wan Roberts. Flagg pulled out the stripe from the inside and disappeared from the stretched 6-Naha-8 Roberts arms. The shot set off from the front edge.
“He’s a game coach,” Flagg said. “He took it in color. I thought I put my legs, I got up. Left it briefly, of course. The shot I live with in the script.”
The game or appearance was no second prevented. It wasn’t possible.
“Cooper is the best player in the country, and when you get the best player in the country on the spot that he likes it is really so simple. We got exactly what we wanted,” the Duke Senior Sion James said. “Sometimes shots are falling; sometimes not. No.”
Harder to explain it was Flagg’s above -ground foul on Roberts when the Duke of Tyrese Proctor Missed the front end of one and one with 20 seconds. At that time, Duke led 67-66 and Flagg was heard behind a foul on Roberts, who clearly wrapped Flagg.
The call validity will be discussed for a long time on BarStoools at Final Four, but Flagg stood up and the Duke in a vulnerable position by seeing that he was holding Roberts’ left arm and igniting it.
Roberts, a 63% free throw shooter, changed the game by moving Houston to the 68-67 leadership of both one-and-one ends and preparing the ground for the final Flagg raid.
For a program that holds a defiant image of gravel and toughness, it is advisable that Houston’s trip to the national title game was a box -changing game. Kellen Sampson, the assistant of Houston and the son of Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson, broke out of one of the folk basketball statements of his father to summarize this moment.
“The discipline will make you beat more than great, that it will help you win,” Kellen Sampson said. “I probably heard it a hundred million times to grow up. Look the more disciplined, the more you find yourself doing small small things that win.”
“Block with great free throw was exactly what was needed,” he added.
Regardless of any talk about the call, Flagg’s Faul gave Duke into a suddenly unthinkable position. The blue devils went from a six -point line with 34 seconds remaining to watch one on the 19 -second mark. Foul was the last swing: up one to one down.
The key to Houston came from abandoning Roberts on Flagg itself, something he didn’t do in the game. Flagg and his passage separated Cougars and made a modification to let Roberts manage the match alone.
“We said here at half -time that we would trust J’wan,” Sampson said. “Damn work in his individual Oneons against Cooper. We are probably excited.
“You have defense No. 1 in America for a reason. Trust him.”
The Houston defenders dealt with their Marauding self all night, with the worst statistics in the box score at the Duke Center Khaman Maluach Failed to catch a reflection in more than 21 minutes of play and end the night with plus -mímus -20.
Roberts’ final Salvo won a hard competition for the winner of Flagg’s potential games.
“I thought he did an amazing job when he got his hands high enough to be an easy look,” Sampson said about Roberts. “A few hard shots all night.”
Flagg completed the competition with 27 points and shot 8: 19 from the field. He got little help because Duke had only one goal over the last 10:30 games.
At 11:54 pm he went back to the dressing room of the Duke in a golf cart and stared into space with a towel wrapped around his neck. Flagg entered the cone of silence suddenly faced at the end of the season and probably university career.
Three minutes later, the Duke of Coach Jon Scheyer walked with his wife beside him and athletic director Nina King at the back. After leading up to 14, Duke just gave up the fifth largest lead in the last four history. The loss sounds, just like the slamming of the door, long to the Offseason.
“I’m still coming back, we’re six with a minute upstairs,” Scheyer said.
“We just have to complete the agreement.”
