March Madness: Can Duke contain Alabama's three-point shooting and reach Final Four?
Duke forward Cooper Flagg reacts during the first half of an NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 game on Thursday in Newark, N.J. Credit: AP/Frank Franklin II
NEWARK — While every team begins the college basketball season wanting to win a national championship, there are others who go into it surrounded by expectations it will.
Duke and Alabama both had that this season. And with the teams pitted against one another in Saturday night’s East Region championship game at Prudential Center, the pressure to meet the expectation has reached a height neither has experienced yet.
“It's the hardest game to win because you're balancing two things,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said of playing in the Elite Eight. “One, each team has great momentum going into this game . . . each team has won three games in a row. And then, obviously, you're an inch away from the promised land, going to a Final Four. With that at stake, it brings out really high-level basketball, desperation and the competitive level, [because] you're that close.”
Each program’s expectations come from different places.
Duke is steeped in a championship tradition with 17 Final Four appearances and five national titles. Scheyer lived it as part of the 2010 championship team.
But in three seasons since taking over for Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski, the deepest he’s guided a team is to last season’s Elite Eight.
“It's heartbreaking when you lose and it's the best feeling when you win — that’s what you work for,” Scheyer said. “That's why you recruit. That's why you build a team. All the time, energy and all that goes into those moments.”
And he’s built quite a team with three freshmen expected to be among the first 10 picks in the 2025 NBA Draft, including star Cooper Flagg, the consensus No. 1 selection.
Alabama’s expectations are mostly rooted in the climb it’s made in six seasons under coach Nate Oats, including reaching the Final Four last season only to fall in the semifinals to eventual champion Connecticut.
“I don't think we'd want it any other way: If you're at a program with no expectations and you've been there six years, it means you haven't been doing your job,” Oats said. “Whatever you call it, pressure [or] whatever you want, the expectation is you win. That's what we expect around here now.”
Many in the Blue Devils’ rotation — freshmen Flagg, Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach — weren’t on the team last season. They may feel the pressure spun off that disappointment. But they also have a different one.
The trio has been part of a team that’s rolled to a 35-3 record and is heralded for how well they work together. This is their one and only chance at a national championship, an opportunity the group doesn't take for granted.
“Every game could be our last, so I think it’s . . . cherishing these moments together, knowing that every game could be our last one together,” Flagg said. “So [we’re] just playing for each other and having that connectivity. It’s kind of what's got us to these moments all year long.”
“That comes [to] our mind, too, knowing that this could be the last game so that we attack it harder now,” Maluach said. “Go in with the mentality to win and be prepared.”
Each team has more than one thing it will need to combat. Top of mind for Duke is Alabama’s three-point shooting. The Crimson Tide (28-8) went 25-for-51 on three-point in dispatching BYU on Thursday night. And while Duke is ranked fourth in defensive efficiency and holds opponents to 30% shooting from beyond the arc, there is far more to ’Bama than just outside shooting.
“I'll say this: If you want to take the three away from us, you can take the three away from us,” Oats said. “I'm going to say it's harder to hold Cooper under his averages because there's a way to take the three away from us. . . . [but] if you want to completely run us off the line, we'll try to go score 70 or 75 points in the paint.
The Crimson Tide will want to stifle Flagg’s scoring and playmaking, but they know that Duke has plenty more weaponry with a roster of players who will go on to the NBA (five are regulars on mock draft boards).
“You're not going to hold him down to 10 points — that’s just not happening,” Oats said of Flagg. “What you can't have is him scoring 25 and getting eight, nine, 10 assists and [drawing] all these fouls. You're going to have to decide what you want to do and [with] some of their guys, you'd better not help very far off because they can really shoot it.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
