Duke vs. Alabama, 2025 NCAA Elite 8
After top-seeded Duke dominated No. 2 Alabama for an 85-65 win in the NCAA Tournament’s East Regional final at the Prudential Center Saturday night, coach Jon Scheyer was doused with blue-and-white confetti on a makeshift stage. His Blue Devils proceeded to snip one net cord each from the rim. Then, beneath the stands, in the bowels of the arena, freshman Cooper Flagg considered the performances of classmates Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach.
“Each night could be somebody else’s night,” said Flagg, who scored 16 points and grabbed 9 rebounds to claim Most Outstanding Player honors for the regional. “I think tonight Kon kind of stepped up and had the ball a lot.”
Knueppel kept coming – off curls, into the paint, through contact – all night to finish with a game-high 21 points, and Maluach added 14 points and 9 rebounds. Junior guard Tyrese Proctor added another 17 points to for the well-rounded attack that will arrive in San Antonio for the Final Four with heightened expectations of claiming the national title.
“We’re not done yet, and we want to get a sixth banner,” said Proctor, who was on the Duke team that lost in the Elite 8 last season.
No matter the coverages and counters that Alabama reviewed in its day of preparation between the Sweet 16 and the Elite 8, nothing head coach Nate Oats conjured could combat the Blue Devils combination of depth or length. Time and again, Flagg and Knueppel knocked down threes or drove to the basket. If they beat their defender, they finished through contact or lobbed alley oops to Maluach, whose size and ferocity also deterred the Crimson Tide from entering the paint on defense.
“We made the point to our guys: we’re not going to go in and score on him, and we had a few guys still try to challenge him,” Oats said. “It’s kind of a habit, you can tell them going in. And then he ended up having two blocks. We ended up having more blocks than them, but the way he challenges, it’s a problem. He challenges at the rim.”
Regression was coming for Alabama. It had to. In its 113-88 victory over BYU in the Sweet 16, Oats’s crew knocked down 25 3-pointers, which broke the NCAA Tournament record. All-American guard mark Sears contributed 10 of those threes. Against Duke, the Crimson Tide managed to hit just 8 of the 32 threes it attempted, and Sears, who committed five turnovers, was limited to 6 points. Scheyer credited his players’s defensive discipline for not overextending themselves on the perimeter due to Alabama’s previous shooting exploits.
“It can spook you where you’re so spread, but obviously where you still have to contest because they can go, like that,” he said. “So I think it’s a credit to our guys.”
On Sunday, Duke, which improved to 12-0 in NCAA Tournament games in New Jersey, will learn its opponent for the national semifinal, which will be the winner of the Midwest Regional – Tennessee or Houston.
No matter who they wind up facing, they know their variety of options differentiates them down the stretch of games.
“It’s a luxury for me, though, really having four guys on the floor you can put the ball in their hands, you trust they’re going to make good decisions, and they can get us into offense.” Scheyer said. “I think that’s an incredible luxury to have.”
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Kevin Armstrong may be reached at [email protected].
