Duke’s Agony: the concerns that many had at the start of the season were finally exhibited in the last four collapse in Houston

San Antonio – There have been more important feedback in the history of the Final Four, but perhaps not more horrible for the losing team than the way Houston killed the Duke season on Saturday evening.

What a pain in Kelvin Sampson played on Jon Scheyer, 37, who saw his third season as a chief coach ending in a mutilative way, the genre that he will never be allowed to forget. Scheyer will have it attached to his reputation until he can atone for and find himself a coach on a Monday evening in April. It could be in a year; It might never happen. Regardless of the gap, he will haunt. From time to time, we get a game in the last four that continues forever. This game – Houston’s victory 70-67 here – is immortal.

For a better part of 90 minutes, Duke seemed to control his talent and size and his Cooper Flagg and Kon Knuppel and everything else who has made this Duke team one of the best that sport has seen for decades.

But Duke had not faced a team like Houston all season.

And so, he was not ready to fight Houston, in his words, in the greatest moments and when it was the most important. There is no exhaust in Houston, there is only the thin chance of survival for the lucky ones. Duke could have believed that it would live, but would speak to any coach who has been turned upside down by Sampson, 69, in recent years, and they will reveal the scars that support after having faced the most difficult program with the most difficult guys in university basketball.

Before the scary reversal, the Blue Devils thought they could beat the cougars on the tracks and the creation of games like most of their 35 other victories in the last five months.

The mirage has reached a peak effect when Flagg dropped a dunk with 10:31 to go to give Duke an advance of 58-45.

Then and there, although nobody in the Alamodom knows it, is the beginning of the end.

What followed was not death by a thousand cuts. Houston killed Duke by systematically stifling the best sports team for the second half of the second half, then started cutting the appendages in the last seconds.

With 8:17 am to play, Duke led 59-45.

Then it was Duke 64, Houston 55 with just over two minutes. If you think you bleed the clock against this team, think again.

With 1:15 to play, Duke’s Edge came down to seven: 66-59.

And then there is this reality: the same Houston team who needed 8 minutes and 9 seconds to score their first nine points of the match only required 33 seconds finally to exceed Duke 9-0 and win by three.

The loss is so monstrous in its shock value, it takes a minute to emerge from the mist to recognize an uncomfortable truth: Duke has lost for reasons that are always looming, dating from the pre-season. This ultra talented team was recognized as the most loaded and promising everything arriving in 2024-25. But talent alone rarely wins the NCAA tournament; The event almost seems to react in hostile tones against this type of construction pride.

Duke’s dependence on a list filled with future choices of lottery to one and Due, in addition to most of the other players who had no experience in annual shift, have left room for skepticism.

Could Duke be great at that time based on these pieces?

For five months, it worked.

Then everything collapsed in just over 30 minutes on Saturday evening.

Duke’s inexperience played a major factor in his collapse against a Houston team whose average age of the five departure is north of 22. Flagg and Kueppel combined for 43 points and 14 rebounds; This loss is not on them, but we were waiting for one or two other scores in the last minutes that have never come. Scheyer wrote a piece on the penultimate possession of Duke who left a lot to be desired: a fall of 15 feet of Flagg, with the sixth year cougar pillar I Wan Roberts obtaining a lot of arms and hand in the Flagg’s face. The shot was short by a few centimeters, and Duke’s season crashed while the ball fell into the hands of Mylik Wilson with eight seconds.

The last plan of the Duke de Flagg’s career could just as easily be written by Houston staff.

“You knew it was going to Cooper,” said assistant cougars, Kellen Sampson, at CBS Sports. “In all their tight matches, the ball was in his hands. The only thing we launched was, have we trampled on? Do we send an additional defender and do we have someone else (we beat)? We gave an additional defender in the first half and he pruned us. We made the decision that we were going to trust our adolescent. The farmer won.”

Extending to other curiosities of pre-season: the guardian of the Blue Devils Junior Tyrese Proctor, who has experienced great moments in recent weeks after a disappointment of a second season, missed the front of a One-And-One with 20 seconds on the left, Duke Up 67-66, which would have given the Blue Devils just a little more cushion against a team of Houston who was walking from the Sands Blue.

Piece by piece, everything was dissolved for Duke.

Scheyer did remarkable work in three seasons by organizing this program. His 89 victories are tied with Brad Stevens and Brad Underwood for the most to start a career as a head coach. But this loss seems, right now, unshakable. The Duke deeper goes, plus the end of the nightmarish since Mike Krzyzewski retired in 2022 in a nightmarish scenario himself (losing against his UNC rival in the national semi-finals). In 2023, the first season of Scheyer, Duke had a stroke of the second round in the hands of a much stronger team in Tennessee. Last year, the state of NC with 11 strikes rocked a much more talented Duke team in the Elite Eight.

This one was painful, so much so that he led Scheyer to build this team with a specific intention.

They did not have enough adults.

Even the final game was emblematic of the Duke of Spiral worthy of vomiting turned to. Sion James launched the length of the ground with 3.7 seconds to leave, throwing it like a boyfriend. Houston diverted – naturally – and the Blue Devils have never even had a more chance of one more chance.

Game Over, Season Over and Duke celebrated in one of the most shocking gifts in a final stage of four that we will never see. All this seemed if possible until it becomes clear why he was never supposed to be.

A result like this produces statistics that move the mind. Duke never caught a rebound after 3:24 am in the second half, when Flagg took a defensive board. Khaman Maluach, each millimeter of 7 feet, 2 inch, was somehow turned on the boards. He recorded 21 minutes and could not enter a single Carom. Only Houston could take 7-2 guys who had destroyed teams and make it a non-factor.

“Duke can surpass us, but they cannot outdo us,” Kellen Sampson told CBS Sports before the match on Saturday.

He was right. Each thumb that Houston needed, he had. Each game in the last three minutes of Houston must have had, he wanted to exist.

How about this dose of the Folles: the n ° 1 offensive in sport this season – and the most efficient in the history of Kenpom – has achieved a basket in the last 10 minutes and 31 seconds.

Flagg, Knueppel, Maluach, Proctor and James: they will all be almost definitively left. They played their last match in white and royal blue. It is a bitter final. The very things that prompted some to question the good faith of the Duke championship five months ago ended up being the vulnerabilities that prevented it from achieving the type of immortality that would have put this team at the same level with the best who have ever played there.

Instead, there is dread, regret and disappointment and the second guess. A large team has had a bad end and the fucking thing on this subject is that the two realities have the impression of being intended to coexist. Scheyer did an excellent job in the construction of this list, but it was not built to win six games at the end of the season. There was too much dependence in assembling so many players who did not know each other before last summer. Even one of the best tête-à-tête prospects has never stopped this.

Cooper Flagg was incredible this season, but he was not good enough to raise Duke in a national title by Force of Will. And if he cannot do it after this season in a team like this, then no team wins everything at the time of the portal with many first-year students playing such important roles.

Houston, in charge of veterans, will face Florida on Monday evening in charge of veterans for the national title. Duke will look from the house and Scheyer will start again. A special season wins a sweetness-bitter description: 2024-25 Duke is now one of the best teams not to win a national title.