March Rewind: Shane Battier, Jason Williams Take '01 Blue Devils a Step Closer

What's March without Duke Tournament basketball? With this year's ACC and NCAA Tournaments cancelled, we'll go back in time to look at the top Blue Devils postseason games from each date in March and early April. Special thanks to SportsReference.com for boxscores and the Duke Library for the newspaper archive.

Duke advanced to the 2001 Sweet 16 with a 94-81 win over 9-seed Missouri in Greensboro, but it wasn’t without drama.

The Tigers jumped out to a 16-10 lead and led by three, 19-16, when Jason Williams noticed that Shane Battier had only scored three points.

“I told him he had to be more aggressive,” Williams said, admitting that he may have used more colorful language to motivate his teammate on the floor.

A short time later, Battier hit a three to spark a 14-0 Duke run.

Duke was playing without Carlos Boozer, who missed his seventh straight game with a broken foot, and with Jason Williams playing on a sprained ankle. The Blue Devils also had to contend with former Coach K player and assistant Quin Snyder, now head coach of Missouri.

“A couple of times, I found myself looking down at the Duke bench and thinking, ‘Wow, that’s Coach K down there.’ It was part strange and part scary,” Snyder said.

Krzyzewski tried to get rid of some of the awkwardness of student facing mentor when he approached Snyder before the game, said, “No handshake now,” and hugged him.

“I got a little emotional before the game when I saw him,” Coach K said. “I love Quin. In addition to loving him, I respect Quin. I’m glad this is over.”

Missouri also had Kareem Rush, who hit two threes right before the break to cut a one-time 15-point Duke lead to six. With about 10 minutes left in the game, another Rush three cut the lead to one.

That’s when Battier and Williams stepped up. Williams hit 11 of 20 shots, 5-of-12 from three, for 31 points. He also dished out nine assists. Battier scored 27, hitting 12 of 13 free throws, to go with 11 rebounds and four blocks.