Young Duke Basketball Head Coach: ‘San Antonio Sounds Great’
As has been the case in all but just a few Duke basketball games this season, it didn’t take long for the No. 1 seed Blue Devils (35-3) to assert their dominance on Saturday night. And via their 85-65 victory over the No. 2 seed Alabama Crimson Tide to capture the East Regional crown in Newark, N.J., the program’s third-year head coach advanced to his first Final Four at the helm.
Also a common sight this season, a freshmen led the way in the scoring department, as Kon Knueppel finished with 21 points. Fellow rookie sensation Cooper Flagg tallied 16 points, nine rebounds, three assists, and one block en route to becoming the East Regional Most Outstanding Player.
But as the mere 37-year-old Jon Scheyer noted in his opening statement afterward, the key to his 2024-25 Duke basketball team’s 15th straight win was the defensive effort in holding Alabama to almost 50 points less than it scored in the Sweet 16:
“San Antonio sounds great. I couldn’t be more excited and happy for these guys…I think Tyrese [Proctor] and I, the feeling of losing last year at this point, every decision we made, everything we did, was to get back here and then have the team have the opportunity to advance to the promised land: to go to San Antonio, to go to the Final Four.
“Couldn’t be more proud of the team as a whole. Their attitudes the whole season from day one, I think this group has been different. They make fun of me. I keep telling them: don’t change, keep being them.
“I thought the story tonight against an incredible offense — and Nate does an amazing job with their offense and the way they play, it’s like nobody else — to hold them to 65 points is incredible. Watching them play the other night, they score 113, 25 threes.
“I think the biggest thing for us was not to take the bait of getting so spread…We want to use our length and size, and these guys did an incredible job.
“Couldn’t be more proud.”
