Duke notes: Blue Devils' run bridging halves propels them to Elite 8

NEWARK, N.J. – For 19 minutes of Thursday night’s Duke-Arizona Sweet 16 game at Prudential Center, it was a dead-even battle.

Then the Blue Devils pressed the accelerator and hit a gear perhaps no other team in the country has.

A Kon Knueppel 3-pointer, and a Cooper Flagg trey from the top of the key at the first half buzzer, gave the Blue Devils the shot of adrenaline they needed.

And the trip to the locker room didn’t cool them off at all. In all it was a 20-5 run spanning the final minute of the first half, and the first 4:19 of the second, that propelled Duke to an eventual 19-point second-half lead, and they held on for a 100-93 win.

“Yeah, we talk about inflection points, and the end of the half is a really big inflection point,” Knueppel said. “So it was tie ballgame, and to hit two threes gives us a bunch of momentum coming into the second half.”

After the injection of energy from the end of the first half, Duke came out equally hot in the second half. Khaman Maluach tipped in a lob and got fouled, giving the Blue Devils a nine-point lead. After Arizona missed two attempts at the other end, Flagg was fouled and made two free throws, followed by Sion James drilling a 3-pointer from the left corner. That gave Duke a 56-44 lead and forced a timeout from Wildcats coach Tommy Lloyd.

“All we did was do what we were supposed to do the whole game,” James said. “For most of the game today we didn’t do what we were supposed to do, especially defensively. “But for those stretches at the end of the first half and beginning of the second half, we got a few stops and got good shots. We locked in defensively.”

With Duke up 12, the run continued. The Wildcats’ Carter Bryant hit a three-pointer, but then Duke responded with three straight buckets, two by Maluach and one by Knueppel, to stretch the lead to 62-47. Maluach’s last bucket in the run, an alley-oop off a pass from Flagg, made it 62-47 and sent the crowd into a frenzy.

Duke pushed the lead to 19, but the game was still in doubt all the way until the final minute.

Here were some other notes from Duke's win against Arizona:

When Maliq Brown re-injured his previously dislocated left shoulder on March 13, it looked like the defensive wizard would be lost for the rest of the season.

But the transfer from Syracuse was active Thursday night, after missing the previous four games. Brown, a defensive force, checked in with 7:45 left in first half, after Patrick Ngongba II picked up third foul, and he looked mostly like himself. He made two nice passes, one leading to a basket, and defended with his usual tenacity, while reaching mostly with his right arm when going for the ball.

Brown played four minutes on Thursday, not scoring, with one rebound, one steal and one assist. With Duke in foul trouble in the second half it appeared he might be needed again if Maluach fouled out, joining Ngongba on the bench.

But Maluach stayed in the game.

Brown’s teammates weren’t surprised he made it back from injury so fast.

“He’s one of the toughest players I ever played with, so the fact that he came back didn’t surprise me,” James said. “His preparation, mental and physical, to come back was great. And when he’s in there, we all feel more confident, we all feel comfortable. We love playing with him.”

How effective Brown will be, moving forward, is of course unknown, but just having him available gives coach Jon Scheyer another tool in the toolbox that could be used.

It only seems like Caleb Love has been playing against Duke since the Laettner/Hurley years, but the Arizona senior certainly has battled the Blue Devils a lot. Thursday night was his 10th career game against Duke, with Love’s teams winning five of the nine, and he averaged 16 points per game in those games.

Thursday night Duke used a bevy of defenders against the high-scoring guard, as Proctor, Isaiah Evans and Cooper Flagg took turns keeping up with him. But nobody could. In one of the best individual performances of the NCAA Tournament, Love torched the Blue Devils for 35 points, and committed zero turnovers in keeping Arizona in the game.

“He’s a great player, I’ve played him for three years now and he’s always been great,” Duke junior Tyrese Proctor said. “He hit some tough shots. Good players are going to make good shots."

Duke was effective early on Love, holding the Wildcat scoreless for the first 11:35 of the game. Love hit his first 3 with 8:25 left in first half, and then heated up, leading Arizona’s charge to stay in the game.

Duke has not been great lately with allowing offensive rebounding to opponents, and Arizona was bale to get its share Thursday night. The Wildcats grabbed five offensive boards in the first half, leading to six second-chance points, a big reason Arizona was able to stay in the game with Duke shooting 61% from the floor in the opening 20 minutes.

The Wildcats grabbed 10 offensive boards in the game.

“When the shot goes up, you gotta go get the ball,” James said. “A game like today, it’s going to be physical, it’s going to be ugly. We didn’t do a good job of that (getting the ball).”

Nobody in the NCAA Tournament was hotter from 3-point range going into Thursday than Proctor, though Alabama’s Mark Sears changed that in Newark.

Proctor didn’t get nearly the opportunities he had in Raleigh, and his game suffered. The junior from Australia made 3 of 8 shots from the field, and was 1-for-4 from the 3-point line.

He also didn’t have the ball in his hands much down the stretch, as Scheyer elected to have Flagg operate as a point forward.

But Duke’s offense still sizzled, as the Blue Devils had another massive offensive performance. Duke shot 60% for the game from the field, and made 85% of its free throws.

“Some guys are going to have it on different nights, and we have such great depth that different guys are ready and pick it up when they need to,” Proctor said.

It was a tough game at times for Maluach, who picked up two early fouls and stayed in foul trouble the whole game. The 7-foot-2 center had only two points in the opening 20 minutes and appeared tentative on defense.

But in the second half he emerged as an offensive and defensive force. The South Sudan native scored 11 points after the break, including a very athletic tip in that led to a three-point play, and managed to play the final minutes without committing his fifth foul.

Maluach also made two huge defensive plays in the final three minutes to help preserve the Duke lead.

“I felt like it affected me a lot, the foul trouble, especially in the first half,” Maluach said. “I wasn’t being physical on the ball. Second half I stayed true to who I am, and was smart and physical at the same time.”

Maluach, who we must remember is still pretty new to the sport, said the next evolution in his game is being aware of how the game is being called and adjusting.

“My next step for me is how to navigate the game, and see how the refs are calling the game, and whether I should be too physical, or stay back a little bit,” Maluach said. “It’s getting there for me.”

Some of the things Flagg does are taken for granted by now, as Duke fans and the media have been watching him for months.

But when he puts together a night like Thursday, he joins some rare company.

Flagg became the first player in the NCAA Tournament since 2003 to have more than 25 points, five boards, five assists and three blocks in a game.

The last player to do that? Marquette star and future NBA Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade. Flagg finished with 30 points, seven assists, six rebounds and those three rejections.

“The thing that's special -- that was one of the best tournament performances I've ever coached or been a part of,” Scheyer said.

Reminder: Flagg turned 18 years old a few months ago.

There have been plenty of times over the years when Duke had so many students from the Garden State that opposing fans called the school “The College of New Jersey at Durham.”

The Blue Devils came into the game 23-1 all-time in the state that produced Jon Bon Jovi, Frank Sinatra and Tony Soprano. They were 10-0 in the NCAA Tournament, and their only loss ever in N.J. was to Arizona on Feb. 26, 1989, 77-75 to these same Arizona Wildcats.

It was Christian Laettner’s freshman season, and at the end of that game Laettner missed the front end of a free throw. Safe to say, the young man from upstate New York recovered from that quite nicely.