Shorthanded and Flawed Duke Survives ACC Quarterfinal Scare. Will It Affect NCAA Tournament Hopes?

CHARLOTTE — Right behind the end of the Duke bench on Thursday night was an impromptu parking zone.

Nestled amid bags of medical equipment, some flailing cords to charge a laptop and the requisite Gatorade coolers that dotted the floor for the Blue Devils’ ACC tournament opener against Florida State was an area reserved for two new additions to the usual traveling assortment accompanying the team: a pair of mobile scooters designed to rest an injured leg and assist in getting around.

They belonged to center Patrick Ngongba II and fellow starter Caleb Foster, both of whom suffered lower leg injuries at the end of the regular season, casting doubt as to their availability the rest of the month.

While the scooters rolling back and forth at every timeout could be indicative of the No. 1 team’s NCAA tournament ceiling being lowered, Duke can count its blessings the movement didn’t result in a one-and-done trip to Charlotte.

The 80–79 quarterfinal thriller over the Seminoles at Spectrum Center doubled as a display of the Blue Devils’ new flaws and their capabilities.

“The fact that we had to come back from being down at halftime, being down eight in the second half, that’s been a different position for us,” coach Jon Scheyer said. “Missing those two guys, Florida State has a ton of confidence, you get a chance to show true character—what it’s all about when you’re down. And I thought we did that.”

Scheyer should be happy they eked out a victory despite shooting 14 of 23 from the free throw line and just 44% from the field in a game where the lead waffled between the two sides 16 times. One of the most efficient offensive teams in the country also committed 15 turnovers, 11 of which were steals. Florida State led for just a tick over 14 minutes and remains the lone ACC team that has given Duke two close calls this season.

“I feel like we’ve been shorthanded the whole year. In the summer, Pat and Malik [Brown] didn’t really practice, so we’ve kind of dealt with this before,” said Cayden Boozer, who started at guard in place of Foster and finished with nine points. “Obviously, it’s different in March, playing in a game. I feel like it took us a little bit to deal with it.”

Duke opened the game with four consecutive field goals to take an early lead, but the Seminoles had a response at every turn behind a barrage of active defense and impressive shotmaking. Lajae Jones poured in 28 points, while Robert McCray V added 25 despite each dealing with foul trouble in trying to limit the regular-season champions from getting out on the fast break.

That resulted in a slim halftime lead and plenty of confidence in the ability to push the tempo on what has been, depending on a variety of metrics, the nation’s best defense.

What has put Duke in line to be the No. 1 overall seed during the men’s NCAA tournament though is the combination of that typically reliable defense with an offense that can be devastatingly effective. For a half-hour, neither was operating in sync as Florida State began to smell an upset in the making, racing out to an eight-point lead midway through the second half getting more and more of the neutrals in the building to do the tomahawk chop in their support with each passing possession. The negative energy was understandable by those in dark shades of blue, the nervous energy so palpable that a few in the Duke section behind the bench started to grumble about every officiating call and sloppy turnover.

Then, as if flipping a switch, the Blue Devils also showed why they are not ones to write off when filling out your bracket due to those injuries by ripping off a 21–4 run over the course of just six minutes that changed the tenor of the game and nudged that ceiling for the Big Dance back up.

“FSU is the hottest team in our league besides us in the last 12 games. I think it just says that we can win ugly. Obviously we don’t want to win ugly, but we can if we have to,” Duke forward Cameron Boozer said. “We were down eight at one point and went on a big-time run, it started on the defensive end. And moving forward just got to be better.”

The prohibitive front-runner for every national player of the year award wasn’t wrong in finishing with a 23-point, 10-rebound double-double. Duke held the Noles scoreless for 4 ½ minutes of that second-half run and seemed to cause issues with their opponents getting set as they ran out every ball, found a way to every putback attempt and looked cohesive on both ends of the court much like they did last week in demolishing North Carolina at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

“It’s part of the strength of the team we’ve built, collective ballhandling and decision-making. [Nikolas Khamenia] has a background of being a point guard. Cam [Boozer] basically is a point guard as well, even though he doesn’t look like one,” Scheyer said. “So it’s going to be by committee. We have multiple guys that can bring it up.”

Few benefited from the more open-ended flow, despite those early turnovers, than Isaiah Evans. The lengthy wing poured in 22 of his career-high 32 in the first half and came up clutch with the same big three-point shots that Foster became known for making over the course of this season.

“That’s the difference in this team,” Evans said. “We don’t change things because of the circumstances. We go and play our brand of basketball.”

For stretches, that wasn’t the case for Duke on Thursday night—especially as Florida State kept chipping away at the lead in the final few minutes and very nearly walked out a winner after McCray flung a desperation attempt from beyond the arc that would have given them a walk-off win.

But when they absolutely needed to, the Blue Devils still showed why they’re as dangerous as anybody in college basketball this season when operating on all cylinders on both ends of the court. It still remains to be seen if that can still take them all the way to Indianapolis for a second straight Final Four, but if it does, they might need a little more space than expected in the bench area to accommodate such a run.

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