March Rewind: Technical Foul Helps Duke Escape Laettner's Worst Game

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.

Christian Laettner played in 23 career NCAA Tournament games and scored double figures in 20 of them. Duke needed a last-second play from his teammates to win in his worst ever March Madness outing.

The Blue Devils forward scored just six points in the second-round win over St. John’s, 76-72, in Atlanta in 1990. He missed all seven of his shot attempts from the field.

It appeared that Duke was headed for an early exit for the only time in Laettner’s career, as St. John’s went on a 19-6 run to open the second half and pulled ahead by nine with 8:49 to go. Then Johnnies’ forward Billy Singleton disagreed with a call that he’d fouled Robert Brickey and picked up a technical foul. Brickey hit his free throws, then the two technical free throws. Duke was awarded the ball thanks to the T and Alaa Abedelnaby put back a Phil Henderson miss for a six-point Duke possession that cut the lead to two.

In the final minute, Duke had the ball with the score tied at 72. Abdelnaby shot a short baseline shot from the right side of the basket that was partially blocked by Malik Sealy. The ball rebounded to Brickey, who laid it in for the go-ahead points. After St. John’s missed a potential game-tying shot, Brickey knocked down a pair of free throws to ice Duke’s fifth straight trip to the Sweet 16.