MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
The Duke Blue Devils led their NCAA semifinal game with Houston by 14 points with 8:03 left in the game. They led by 9 with 2:06 left, and with 1:26 left they were given a 92.7% chance to win the game by ESPN.
They led by 6 points with 34 seconds left, by 3 with 25 seconds left and by 1 with 19 seconds left.
But Duke hit just two field goals in the final 13 minutes of the game, scored one point in the final 1:14 and could barely inbound the ball.
Conversely, and shockingly, Houston scored 11 in that final 1:14, closing the final 33 seconds with a 9-0 run to win it, 70-67, and reach tonight’s NCAA championship game against Florida.
In a tournament dominated by chalk, true Madness waited until the final two minutes of the next to last game of the season to strike – in full force. Duke fans would say with a Black Magic force; others (many others) would say with a Karma’s a (Witch) force.
Duke was on the verge of winning a blowout; Duke lost by 3, but would have lost by 10 if the game had lasted 30 seconds longer.
Duke gave it away; Houston took it away.
As the bumper sticker used to say about the late, great Shaw’s Cafe, “It’s all true,”
Houston produced the second-largest second-half comeback in Final Four history, behind only Loyola-Chicago’s rally from 15 points down with 14 minutes remaining to beat Cincinnati in overtime in the 1963 championship game.
That’s because Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson said, “We don’t quit; we play harder.” It’s because Duke let up after it had fought off the Cougars to restretch the lead to 14 by allowing a 4-point swing in four seconds that made the final eight minutes game time.
The Cougars remained calm and confident, particularly in the final 35 seconds when, trailing 67-64, they refused to foul, and instead forced a Duke turnover and then drew to within a point with 25 seconds left.
The following Duke possession resulted in a trip to the foul line, a questionable foul on Cooper Flagg, and then a one-point Houston lead.
Imagine. A questionable call in a Duke national semifinal game? Has it ever happened before? All the time, but it had never happened to Duke. Until Saturday night.
Houston won the game in the final eight minutes on discipline. Duke lost the game because the remarkable freshman class that got the Devils to the Final Four looked and played like scared freshmen for the first time all season. Other than in the three games Duke lost previously this season by a combined 14 points.
As third-year Duke head coach Jon Scheyer said, this historic collapse will be “hard to process,” but Duke haters shouldn’t waste time waiting for long-term fallout on the Duke basketball psyche or success.
Scheyer will continue to draw great players to Duke with what is said to be an “unlimited” NIL warchest, and the Blue Devils will return to the Final Four, just as Maryland did in 2002 after blowing a 10-point lead to Duke at home in the final minute and then after getting absolutely hosed against its then-ACC foe in the 2001 national semifinals.
The officiating on that night was so clearly slanted that it prompted the late Lute Olson, then the Arizona coach, who had just watched the game, to ask Maryland coach Gary Williams, “Is it always like that?”
To which Williams reportedly replied, “You’ll find out tomorrow.”
The following night in the 2001 NCAA final, the Wildcats found out.
The legitimately questionable call against Duke on Saturday (as CBS analyst Bill Rafferty said, it was a play-on) wasn’t anywhere near to what was perpetrated in 2001, but there are still those of us, 24 years later, who most certainly appreciated the irony.
Bottom line: Duke gave it away; Houston took it away.
It’s all true.
Ask anyone at Shaw’s Cafe.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT