The game essentially ended at the 15:52 mark of the second half. An entry pass from Sion James looking for Cooper Flagg was swatted away by an Arizona defender.
A scrap for the ball came up prosperous for the Duke freshman, but he still couldn’t find a way to quite control it.
He stumbled again as he tried heading to the basket, then threw up a prayer of an alley-oop to South Sudanese big man Khaman Maluach. Maluach caught it. Slam. Rapture at The Rock.
In an NCAA Tournament that has lacked in Cinderellas and upsets, dominance is on the menu in 2025. This year, the chef de cuisine is Cooper Flagg – the Maine native who has dazzled and delighted all season long and whose talents have shone brightest in March.
That’s especially true for tonight at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey – where Flagg dropped [statline] in a 100-93 win over Arizona to book a trip to the Elite Eight.
There, Flagg and the Blue Devils will face a hot Alabama team for a shot at a ticket to the finale of the Big Dance, one of the most enthralling spectacles in American sports: the Final Four.
Duke freshman star Cooper Flagg dropped 30 points in a 100-93 Sweet 16 win over Arizona
Flagg’s abilities helped lead the one-seeded Blue Devils to the next round of the tournament
Flagg (R), Kon Knueppel (L), and Duke will now face a hot Alabama team for a Final Four berth
While not rivals in the traditional sense, the bond between Duke and Arizona runs closer than one could expect of teams from opposite sides of the country.
Consider that in 2001, these two schools met in the national title game. An Arizona squad featuring Gilbert Arenas and Richard Jefferson fell to the Duke squad of Jay Williams and Shane Battier.
The last time these two teams met in the NCAA Tournament came at this stage in 2011, when the Wildcats got some revenge over the Blue Devils and denied Seth Curry and Kyrie Irving a shot at a national title.
So here, in New Jersey (very much Duke territory), a chance to undo that wrong from over a decade ago presented itself.
After all, this group may prove to be just as talented as that 2011 Duke team. They already have their superstar in Flagg, the presumptive first overall pick. The cast around him is high-quality too.
All they needed to do was get past an Arizona team they managed to handle in Tucson earlier this season.
Flagg made his mark early, dropping 18 first half points on a 7-for-12 shooting line that included a heave at the buzzer that fell in.
The pumped up New England beat his chest and bellowed out a ‘Let’s f***in go’ before heading to the locker room up by six points.
Arizona guard Caleb Love led all scorers with 35 points as he tried dragging them over the line
Flagg’s star power will attract attention in college this year and in the NBA for years to come
Opposite him on Arizona was Love, who dropped 14 points – with five of those points coming from the line.
Then came the lob before ‘the lob’. Flagg drove the lane and saw Maluach about a minute before his out-of-control attempt. This one was clinical: simply up, simply down, Duke 11 point lead.
The acrobatic bucket from Maluach put them up 15 points – which seemed to be the exclamation mark on a sure-fire Duke victory.
That is, until Arizona went on an 8-0 run within a minute of the under-eight media timeout that brought the game back to within double-digits.
It was Love that brought them there, seemingly dead-set on dragging the Wildcats into the next round.
After a night in the Prudential Center that seemed dim for the occasion, tension began rising with 4:30 to go. Out of a timeout, dueling chants of ‘U-of-A’ and ‘Let’s Go Duke’ in the same cadence broke out.
Try as they might, time just wasn’t on the side of the Wildcats – who cut the deficit to the mid-single-digits, but not further.
MORE TO FOLLOW.
