Knueppel celebrates with teammates after winning the tournament Most Outstanding Player award. / Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images
CHARLOTTE—The Duke Blue Devils unexpectedly went through the stages of grief at the men’s ACC tournament this week.
First there was sheer shock, with a 2½-minute span on Thursday robbing the team of forward Maliq Brown to a dislocated shoulder that saw him eventually carted off to a nearby hospital. Worse, national player of the year front-runner Cooper Flagg rolled his ankle while going up for a rebound, causing him to be taken by wheelchair to an X-ray machine.
Then came depression and denial in quick succession as the team needed to stage a furious comeback (the largest of the season) in order to beat the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in the wake of those injuries. There was anger, too, easy to see in several moments of frustration against the rival North Carolina Tar Heels in the semifinals amid a collapse staved off only with the help of an inadvertent lane violation.
Behind closed doors, there was some bargaining as the debate over Flagg’s return ultimately led to him sitting out the rest of his time in the Queen City with an eye toward getting healthy for the tournament that matters far more next week.
Finally, however, there came acceptance. There came resolve. There came hunger. After dispatching the Louisville Cardinals, 73–62, on Saturday night, there eventually came a trophy (and some clippings of the nets) as tournament champs for the second time in Jon Scheyer’s three seasons in charge.
“I told our team right away [at the start of the season], I believe if we approach it the right way, one day at a time, when we have opportunities to win a championship like this, we’ll be ready for it,” Scheyer said. “Not to put up Day 1, San Antonio or ACC regular-season championship or ACC tournament championship. Our guys have taken it to heart.”
Having both the ACC regular-season and tournament titles in hand was fitting for the Blue Devils, who dominated the conference in impressive fashion. While much was made of the weakness of the league this season—and make no mistake, it was historically bad—there was little the superbly assembled roster could do about that.
All they could do was go out and play. Nearly running the table was just the byproduct of this latest dabble with greatness.
Duke lost twice in a two-week span earlier this season and then just once since Thanksgiving, its lone blemish in league play at the Clemson Tigers that did more to help outside perception than hurt it. The Blue Devils scored fewer than 74 points just twice since the calendar turned to 2025 and are the only team in the country to enter the Big Dance ranked in the top five of both KenPom’s offensive and defensive efficiency.
Everyone knew they were good, though, not just as the No. 1 team in the country these past two weeks with a potentially generational talent fronting a surprisingly likable team for casual fans to watch if they were capable of looking past the program’s usual perch as an evil empire. Yet whenever such dominance is on display in college basketball, it often becomes a talking point about the need to be tested going into March, as if adversity is that missing ingredient every team requires to go deep across the next three weekends.
Looking for it or not, safe to say they got some all the way through a final that teetered between the two sides until the late stages.
“Throughout the tournament the last two days, they haven’t shot it particularly well, but they’re a very, very good shooting team, and our number one key to the game was defend the three,” Louisville coach Pat Kelsey said. “They make it difficult because they got good players and a good scheme, but gosh darn, I felt like the ball was leaving their hands, every one of those things were going in, and it seemed like they did for a while. But they made shots, and you tip your cap to them. They deserved to win today. They were the better team.”
That’s the thing about this Duke side; they were tested this week and came through with flying colors. Despite the early worries on Thursday afternoon, what should cause more angst among fellow national title contenders was seeing the Blue Devils win the ACC tourney with Flagg in warmups and relegated to being what is likely the highest-paid cheerleader in the sport the past 72 hours.
“It’s scary, you know?” guard Isaiah Evans said. “We got so many pieces and once we all get 100% healthy, we’re going to be rocking and rolling.”
This was particularly evident early in the second half as the Cardinals looked to extend the 38–33 lead they had at the break even further.
After guard Terrence Edwards Jr. hit a jumper to beat the shot clock just ahead of the 15-minute mark, Duke spent the rest of the ensuing media timeout focused on changing up its defense. Scheyer calmly stared at each member of the rotation and called out for greater cohesion. Assistant coach Will Avery, no stranger to teams with national title aspirations, held up a whiteboard several times to discuss additional assignments. Techno music blared overhead at the Spectrum Center as some of the heavily pro-Duke crowd sat watching on nervously, but each player nodded along and broke the huddle with looks of clear determination on their faces.
Whatever was said clearly worked wonders as Duke went on a 20–6 run over the next seven minutes to seize control of the game.
“I think our offense wasn’t clicking like it has all year. We let that affect us defensively,” said Tyrese Proctor, who finished with a team-high 19 points. “I think we were playing defense individually. I think once we got back to how we got here as a team, in the second half we were completely different, turning the whole game around.”
Not only that, but the spark came from up and down the Blue Devils’ roster in a good sign for March Madness that they won’t be overly reliant on a gimpy Flagg to return to his national player of the year form.
Big man Patrick Ngongba II, who spent part of the preseason resting due to a foot injury, came up massive with additional minutes in place of Brown, an athletic rebounder. His blocked shot just before the under-12 timeout elicited a thunderous roar around the arena was underscored by back-to-back Sion James and Proctor threes on the other end, capping off a 12–0 stretch that gave the Blue Devils back the lead for good.
James, who notched 15 points and hit both of his shots from beyond the arc, contributed plenty on both ends with more minutes than usual. On top of the scoring outburst, his active hands notably helped limit Edwards to just seven points the rest of the night after the Cardinals guard had dropped 22 over the course of the first 20 minutes.
Offensive spacing changed significantly in Flagg’s absence and Duke found an answer for that as well. Kon Knueppel, who poured in a career-high 28 in the rally against Georgia Tech in the quarterfinals, saw progressively fewer open looks as the tournament wore on as defenses adjusted to no longer worrying about a potential No. 1 NBA draft pick having the ball in his hands.
That forced the “other” star freshman on Duke’s roster to rediscover parts of his game that could pay off in the ensuing weeks, particularly Knueppel’s ability to drive the lane and get layups.
“I didn’t really feel like I tried to turn it up a notch or anything. I just tried to make the right play,” said Knueppel after adding 18 points and eight rebounds against the Cards. “With Cooper being out, I knew some of the burden, especially the minutes. I had to play a lot more. It was just trying to be sharp, nothing spectacular, not trying to do anything crazy.”
His teammates seemed to save that crazy for later. As the clock approached midnight and Knueppel was named the ACC tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, the rest of the Duke players mobbed him on stage before forcing him forward to say a few words.
The normally reserved Wisconsin native didn’t have many to utter but did depart slightly from the one day at a time focus that Scheyer has tried to instill ever since bringing the youngster South to Durham, N.C.
“Two down, one to go,” he said.
The crowd of Duke fans, staff members and throngs of family members still near the court were delighted. Some began chanting, “We want six!” in reference to the program’s five national championships, a roar that eventually overtook the entire arena.
It wasn’t easy to get such a point for the Blue Devils but after running rampant through the ACC yet again this week, they’re perhaps even better positioned to deliver those goals as they chase even greater prizes ahead.
