Duke basketball teammate of Cooper Flagg drops ‘craziest’ take after eye injury
Duke basketball’s Cooper Flagg suffered an injury on Saturday against Florida State.
It was another showing of brilliance from Duke basketball with Cooper Flagg continuing his noteworthy freshman season. The Blue Devils defeated Florida State 100-65, despite Flagg taking a hard poke to his eye in the first half.
After his return to the court for the second half, Flagg received a great deal of respect from his team, though most of them weren’t surprised. They’ve been privy to his competitiveness and grit long before Saturday’s matchup.
“He was beat up and scratched up,” teammate Sion James said, per ESPN. “Cooper is one of the toughest guys I’ve ever played with. I trusted that if he was all right, he’d be back. He was back and better than ever.”
Flagg was fouled hard on the play, via Carolina Blitz on X, formerly Twitter.
Cooper Flagg was slow to get up after a hard foul and seemed to loose his balance a little when he stood up. He just went back to the locker room
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One of the nation’s best players managed 16 points on 5-of-9 shooting from the field, with six rebounds and four assists in just 20 minutes of action. He also missed more than 11 minutes to end the first half. That clearly did nothing to shatter his confidence.
Duke basketball’s Jon Scheyer concerned after Cooper Flagg’s injury
Flagg’s determination to keep playing was shown, especially because Duke held a 17-point lead over the ACC opponent at the half. Blue Devils head coach Jon Scheyer expressed what was going through his mind looking at Flagg after the scary injury.
“As a basketball player, you don’t think about injuring your eye,” Scheyer said. “That doesn’t cross your mind. I had never seen him look scared. I thought he was scared at first, rightfully so, because you don’t know how serious or permanent. … I was really nervous about him.”
“He had some vision issues in the first half and tested it out and he said he was good to go, and he was,” Scheyer said. ” … He’s so tough. His mom is yelling at him to rebound and defend if he’s going back in the game, so I didn’t have to say a whole lot.”
Eventually, it all circled back to Flagg’s supporting cast. Primarily, James’ belief in his star teammate.
“That’s not the craziest thing we’ve seen him do all year,” James said. “We’ve seen him do crazier things. That’s what makes him who he is.”
