SAN ANTONIO — Inside the searing silence of the Duke locker room, the echo of a door slamming shut intermittently rippled through. Every time a player or staff member ducked into the adjacent coaches locker room, the bang of the door reverberated like a siren in a still night.
There’s nothing to prepare a team for the emotional spiral that comes with squandering a six-point lead in the final 35 seconds. After Houston scored the game’s final nine points in 33 seconds to stun Duke 70-67 on Saturday night in the Final Four, a hush accompanied the attempts for the Blue Devils to process its newfound infamy.
Players wandered quietly to grab a slice of pizza from one of the 10 boxes stacked high across a Powerade cooler. They stared down at their phones to avoid eye contact with the lingering media. One walk-on returned from the shower with tears in his eyes. Another wrote in a journal with a pencil.
They replayed how somehow a six-point lead could disappear in less than 20 seconds. But even after a spree of in-bounds failures, misses and mental gaffes, two key moments in the final 20 seconds from star freshman Cooper Flagg — a foul and a miss — capped the stunning meltdown.
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Flagg’s missed 12-foot jumper, with Duke trailing by one point, will be the play that will live forever in replays. Duke had a chance to take control of the game and stop the hemorrhaging and called a timeout with 17 seconds left. The Blue Devils cleared out for Flagg, who got an isolation matchup with Houston sixth-year senior J’Wan Roberts. Flagg pulled up from inside the lane and faded away from the outstretched arms of the 6-foot-8 Roberts. The shot caromed off the front rim.
“It’s the play Coach drew up,” Flagg said. “Took it into the paint. Thought I got my feet set, rose up. Left it short obviously. A shot I’m willing to live with in the scenario.”
There was no second-guessing the play or the look. It simply didn’t go in.
“Cooper is the best player in the country, and when you get the best player in the country in the spot he likes, it’s really as simple as that. We got exactly what we wanted,” Duke senior Sion James said. “Sometimes shots go down, sometimes they don’t. That one didn’t.”
Tougher to explain was Flagg’s over-the-back foul on Roberts when Tyrese Proctor missed the front end of a one-and-one with 20 seconds remaining. Duke led 67-66 at the time, and Flagg got whistled for a foul on Roberts, who clearly had him boxed out.
The validity of the call will long be debated on barstools at the Final Four, but Flagg put himself and Duke in a vulnerable position by appearing to hold down Roberts’ left arm and getting whistled for it.
Roberts, a 63 percent free throw shooter, changed the game by making both ends of the one-and-one, pushing Houston to a 68-67 lead and setting the stage for Flagg’s final foray.
For a program that holds a defiant image of grit and toughness, it’s fitting that Houston’s trip to the national title game featured a game-changing box out. Kellen Sampson, the Houston assistant, broke out one of his father’s folksy basketball sayings to sum up the moment.
“Discipline gets you beat more than great helps you win,” Kellen Sampson said. “I’ve probably heard it a hundred million times growing up. Look, the more disciplined you are, the more that you can find yourself doing little tiny things that’s going to win.”
He added: “A big-time free throw blockout was exactly what was needed.”
Regardless of the debate over the call, Flagg’s foul put Duke in a suddenly unthinkable position. They went from a six-point lead to trailing by one from the 34-second mark to the 19 second mark. The foul was the final swing, up one to down one.
The key for Houston came from leaving Roberts alone on Flagg, something they didn’t do early in the game. Flagg picked them apart with his passing, and the Cougars made an adjustment to let Roberts handle the matchup by himself.
“We said here at halftime, we’re going to trust J’Wan,” Kellen Sampson said. “He’s doing a heck of a job in his one-on-ones against Cooper. We’re probably over-helping.”
He added: “You have the No. 1 defense in America for a reason. Trust him.”
Roberts and Houston’s defense acted their marauding selves all night, with the most jarring statistic in the box score Duke center Khaman Maluach failing to grab a rebound in more than 21 minutes of play and ending the night with a plus-minus of -20.
Roberts’ final salvo was getting a tough contest on Flagg’s potential game-winner.
“I thought he did an awesome job of getting his hands up high enough that it wasn’t an easy look,” Sampson said. “Some tough shots all night.”
Flagg finished the night with 27 points, shooting 8-for-19 from the field. He got little help, as Duke had just one field goal over the game’s last 10:30. He rode back to the Duke locker room in a golf cart at 11:54 p.m., staring into space with a towel wrapped around his neck.
He entered the cone of silence, suddenly facing the end of a season and likely a college career.
Three minutes later, Duke coach Jon Scheyer rode past with his wife next to him and athletic director Nina King sitting in the back. Duke just coughed up the fifth-biggest lead in Final Four history. The loss will echo, just like that slamming door, long into the offseason.
“I keep going back, we’re up six with under a minute to go,” Scheyer said.
He added: “We just have to finish the deal.”
