Cooper Flagg, Duke looking for answers after the collapse of Fateful Final Four

San Antonio – Of their seats, seven rows behind the Duke bench, Ralph and Kelly Flagg had the perfect view of the moment when everything turned into dust.

With eight seconds to play in the national semi-finals on Saturday against Houston’s n ° 1, their son Cooper rose for the recovery rider whose inheritances are made. Pour it and Duke in the national championship match for the first time in a decade. But miss it?

Everything, finished. Immediately.

This is why, as one of the best first -year students to play university basketball who took off just inside the left elbow, 68,252 eyes sets inside the Alamodome – and millions of others at home – followed the path of a parable that decides the fate of Duke.

CLICKETS.

Short, out of the front iron. Houston rebounds.

Ball game.

Kelly, blue sunglasses in the shape of a heart on her head, leaning his head on Ralph’s shoulder on the right. A deaf noise, with the weight of a tank.

Three seconds later, the stunning 70-67 of Houston against Duke, one of the most catastrophic collapses in the history of the NCAA tournament, was finished. Cooper Flagg did not succeed in his Blue Devils jersey and raised his white jersey to his chin, grabbing something while everything else slipped out of its reach. His best -classified Blue Devils led almost the whole match, especially in nine points with 2:06 to play. Even a six -point cushion with 34 seconds to play was not enough for the best classified Blue Devils and their five departure students from future NBA studs to maintain the implacable coogs.

While the return of Houston for the ages – the fifth largest in the history of the Final Four – will be told and told for generations, the same goes for the complete disintegration of Duke. In the past 18 months, Duke Jon Scheyer coach orchestrated this whole list around Flagg and his national player of the year of the year, surrounding the 18 -year -old phenomenon with the ideal mix of first -year stars and veterans players. He hired a mental skills coach to teach his team of emotional tenacity, has planned a vicious calendar without a conference to test the courage of the Blue Devils, pushed each last of his tokens in the center for this player and this team – then, rider.

The opportunity of a life, evaporating via a Houston 9-0 race in the last 33 seconds of the Final Four. Scheyer and Duke will never shake the bite of what happened on Saturday evening in San Antonio.

“You are a thumb of the national championship match,” said Scheyer afterwards. “You spend some of the most special moments of the tournament with the most heartbreaking loss. … There is a lot of pain that comes with it.”

Between this team and the 1999 Blue Devils iteration, neither of the best squads in the history of the Kenpom database, 29, did everything.

Now Duke has always won the TAP and Tournament’s regular season titles and will catch an 18th Final Four banner at Cameron Indoor Stadium. But Monday evening in San Antonio was the goal. How did it happen?

The game by play reads more graphic than some of Stephen King’s horror novels. The detangling started with a little more than two minutes to play, after a pointer of 3 flagg points and a subsequent volleyball peak in a block gave Duke an advance of nine points and all the momentum. At that time, Kelly went up to her seat to see above the crowd around her, and started to face anyone at hand. But the Houston goalkeeper Emanuel Sharp struck a disputed lay-up, and at the other end, Tyrese Proctor brought the ball through Houston Big Jojo Tugler. Sion James, the companion in the Rear Proctor area, immediately approached and told Proctor to “recover” – but the avalanche, turned out to be in progress.

The teams exchanged baskets thereafter, the perfect Flagg shot – it was eight for eight from the line – duel against Sharp shooting. After Tugler obtained an administrative technical fault with 1:14 to play, for slapping the ball from the hands of James before the Duke’s goalkeeper won, Kon Knuppel sank a franc throw that pushed the Blue Devils’ advance. Cooper’s older brother Hunter, gnawed with his nail once Knuppel’s shot fell good. And in the stands behind the Duke bench, almost everyone – Kelly and Ralph; Scheyer’s wife, Marcelle; his parents, Jim and Laury; Even Mike Krzyzewski, assistant to his first NCAA tournament match since the defeat that sent him to retire, the last defeat of Duke Final Four in 2022 – did the same movement, again and again: the tilt of the head to the small scores under the Jumbotron Alamodome, wishing time to accelerate.

But if anything, he puts the earth at a frame by frame.

Tugler blocking the attempt at KnuPpel’s Lay-Up.

3 others from Sharp.

Three defenders of Houston tips and intercepting the inbound pass from James to Flagg, which has turned into a dunk of follow -up in Tugler.

Proctor missing the front end of a One and

Flagg being called to an exaggerated controversial fault – his only match to all – on the rebound that followed.

I Wan Roberts flowing two free throws with 19.1 seconds on the left which, finally, removed the head of Duke and put Houston.

And finally, Flagg misses his potential match winner.

Anything that could be badly turned, suddenly in a flood.

“A blow with which I am ready to live,” said a flag with tearful eyes in an post-match cod. “I thought I had my feet. Ris. Ris. I left it short, of course.

Scheyer Calling the Flagg number with the game on the line was obviously not a surprise. Not only is Flagg is his clear talent, but just look to the past. In each of the first three defeats of Duke this season – against Kentucky, Kansas and Clemson – Scheyer released the same end -of -game strategy: give Flagg the rock, then keep away from his way. What if Flagg had not delivered in these three previous cases? Your best player is your best player.

“Be just Cooper,” said James about Duke’s final design. “We trust him, and it’s 100 times out of 100”.

At this last time, Scheyer looked at his team in the eyes and delivered what would turn out to be his last message in play all season: “Good F – Gas now, go. Are you ready?”

Very or not, Miss de Flagg will now be part of her inheritance. Not the one who surpasses his amazing achievements, but not also something that can be ignored. His final line of university statistics of 27 points, seven rebounds, four assists, three blocks and two interceptions speak of himself. He became the first player since stolen and the blocks have become a statistic measured in 1986 to direct or co-direct his team in each major statistics of a final match four. And there were many other games in these last two minutes calamites which, if you reverse them, give a completely different result.

But Duke’s last chance to go to the national championship match was literally in the hands of the teenager – and he failed about three inches.

After Flagg trotted from the courtyard of Alamodom, while Houston danted on it, sorrow settled. Ralph leaned, rubbing the neck. Kelly could only look straight to the virgin face, the tense lips. Slowly, one by one, the other dignitaries of the Duke and the parents around them made their exits – but the flaggs were seated in sadness. The Arena PA system only twisted the knife, playing the song of the American authors “Best Day of My Life”: it’s going to be the best day of my li-IIIFE …

“It doesn’t feel good, Bruh,” said second -year goalkeeper Caleb Foster. “That’s all I can tell you.”

At 11:12 p.m. local time after a small army of journalists and cameras assembled the length of the corridor in black tapping outside the Duke changing rooms, Scheyer finally emerged from behind the metal doors of the obstacle. He published for two compulsory television interviews a few steps from the solid gold lettering affixed to the concrete walls in the room: the road ends here. “We were so close,” he told CBS Sports Tracy Wolfson, holding his fingers to a thumb. He took the blame, saying that he had not put his young players in the positions they needed to be broken.

This is one of them. But it was not why Duke made a blow during the last 9:16 am, or why Houston was ahead of the Blue Devils 25-8 after taking a 14-point advantage with 8:17 to play.

In Duke’s funeral locker room, players spoke in their own way. Proctor leaned back with a towel on his head. He had gone 0 for 9 during the defeat of Duke at the end of the season a year ago, a busy reason for which he stayed this season. “I love these guys,” he stifled. “It just fears that we have failed.”

Stanley Borden on foot was quietly seated, journalist in a small paper notebook with a purple mechanical pencil. Borden was a statistics tutor by the last semester, and the Duke Academic Resource Center gave him fine brown notebooks. Since then, he has taken journalization, his flow of writings of conscience, which gives clarity.

“There is a thought when you have a loss like this, as, what was it for?” Said Borden. “Obviously, many sacrifices (we do) to win a national championship – or at least go to the match for the title, because nothing is guaranteed. So there was this kind of despair, well, what was it all for, if we don’t do it? And if we didn’t do it?

Even in a five -depth room with media members, propane burners keeping barbecue trays provided by the Duke NCAA warm at the back of the room could be heard. The players slowly migrate in the locker room of the separate coach.

Duke’s three first -year students were absent from Duke: Flagg and Knueppel – who combined for 43 of the 67 Duke points, and who were elsewhere in the Alamodom leading their last college press conference – as well as the 2 -inch 2 -inch Khaman Maluach center. He finished in a way without rebound in 21 minutes, the only match all season that the choice of projected lottery did not engulf a single board, another amazing one night stored with them.

As Flagg and Kueppel rolled a golf cart at six minutes from midnight, almost everyone had dispersed. A towel around his neck, Flagg thanked her walk before disappearing again in the locker room, this time for good. What he said or did, we will never know. But at one point, he will again throw the message of the fortune cookie from PF Chang which he had slipped to the back of his light phone case:

Many successes come to meet you

Undoubtedly.

Not fair on Monday.

Not the only flagg, and Duke, did everything in pursuit.

(Photo by Cooper Flagg: Alex Slitz / Getty Images)