DURHAM, N.C. — The blood splotches on Cooper Flagg’s right undershirt sleeve said it all.
So did Duke having only four turnovers as a team Wednesday night.
“Really?” Flagg asked about the stat. “The whole game?”
The whole game.
“Wow,” the 17-year-old superstar responded, a smile escaping from underneath his blond, sweat-matted bangs. “That is … That shows growth.”
It does. And really, that is the overarching takeaway from No. 9 Duke’s 84-78 win over No. 2 Auburn: that Jon Scheyer’s young, freshman-laden team did, in fact, learn from its late-game miscues against both Kentucky and Kansas. That’s the whole reason Scheyer built his nonconference schedule this way, right? Full of booby traps against other national championship caliber teams?
Scheyer didn’t schedule all of Kentucky, Arizona, Kansas and Auburn just willy-nilly. Ha! No. He did it because in college basketball’s most experienced era, Scheyer knew his squad — which starts three freshmen and has three more on the bench — would need seasoning to avoid getting punked come postseason play. Rather take your lumps early and improve, instead of waiting until it’s lose-and-go-home time to truly test yourself.
Of course, that sounds wise. But when Flagg — Duke’s latest freshman sensation, and the projected No. 1 pick in next year’s NBA Draft — coughs up two turnovers in the final minute vs. Kentucky, in an eminently winnable game with the score tied, there go the takes about Flagg coming up short. Same deal vs. Kansas; Flagg had another pivotal giveaway down the stretch, as did fellow freshman (and projected lottery pick) Kon Knueppel.
Not like Flagg wasn’t already bearing the burden of college basketball’s brightest spotlight.
“Ever since both of those games, it’s just been pain in the back of my head, burning me every time I think about it,” Flagg said. “I wish I could just get those possessions back.”
But the next best thing?
Growing from them, and dropping 22 points, 11 rebounds, four assists, three steals and two blocks — with no turnovers, for the first time all season — against a top-10 defense, per KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency rankings.
Voila: Now you understand Flagg smiling in a folding chair in front of his pearly-white Duke locker.
tough from Coop (📺 ESPN) pic.twitter.com/dy7aqs4KTZ
— Duke Men’s Basketball (@DukeMBB) December 5, 2024
“I’ve always felt like Cooper’s a one-time guy. He needs to experience something one time to get adjusted,” Scheyer said. “In this short of a time frame — it’s (been) a month — to see the growth in big-time moments, to create shots against high-level defenders, that’s big.”
Scheyer isn’t wrong, but even that feels like underselling it. Whether because of the hype he elicited out of high school, or the college he chose, or whatever other reason people have, doubt about Flagg’s ability to carry a team naturally mutated, especially after those late-game turnovers on national TV. Scheyer always believed Flagg could, of course. (He wouldn’t have jettisoned multiple former four- and five-star recruits this summer if not, favoring fit around Flagg over continuity.) So did many in the college basketball space who had actually seen him play a time or two. But delivering for a grassroots team, or even a stacked high school one, is not the same as delivering for Duke, in the clutch, against the best and baddest college hoops has to offer.
Wednesday, Flagg checked that box, too. Unequivocally.
What are haters going to say now?
“It was one of his better games tonight,” Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said, still scanning a box score. “Didn’t have a turnover, so we didn’t bother him enough.”
That means something coming from Pearl, whose Tigers had already beaten three top-12 teams in the first month of the season. Auburn knows good teams, good players. And on Wednesday, in Duke and in Flagg, it saw both head-on.
It wasn’t just Flagg’s final stat line, either, impressive as that was. It was Auburn racing out to a 13-2 lead — the kind it used to wallop Memphis in the Maui Invitational title game — while looking every bit the aggressor, and Duke taking that punch squarely on the jaw, before getting back up off the mat. The nation’s top-ranked defense — the kind Scheyer learned to love in his first season as head coach, and which he prioritized by not signing a rotation player under 6-foot-5 — then ratcheted into gear, holding the nation’s No. 1 offense to eight missed shots in its next nine attempts and a three-minute scoreless stretch entirely. Suddenly, Duke had mounted a mirroring 13-3 run, reviving a game that looked like it could have gone sideways in the opening minutes.
Scheyer’s message in his first timeout to spark some life back into his team:
“We’re going to find it,” he said, “at some time.”
And Duke did — both in this game, and more broadly, in its season.
Of course, Flagg didn’t pull the Blue Devils back from the brink alone. Five-star guard Isaiah Evans — yes, another one — came off the bench for his breakout: an 18-point masterpiece of six made 3s, all in the first half. Evans played exactly zero seconds against Kentucky and Kansas, but had been grinding in the shadows, according to Scheyer, and finally unleashed his flamethrower on the unsuspecting Tigers.
Duke’s 3-point shooting is hardly a weakness, entering Wednesday having made 36.1 percent of its triples. But it’s also an area any coach would love to bolster. Evans brought that, introducing a previously unknown ingredient to the Blue Devils’ recipe for success. It’s unfair to expect Evans to replicate his first-half performance every night, but if he knocks down a 3-pointer or two (or occasionally more)? Then it makes it only that much more difficult for opponents to key in on Flagg, whose shooting touch — both from 3 (23.3 percent) and the free-throw line (69.6 percent) — has been the only thing other than turnovers that he’s struggled with.
“That’s just the type of team we have,” Flagg said. “There’s so much talent that can just step up and make big plays.”
The list goes on, even if Flagg and Evans were the headliners Wednesday. Backup center Maliq Brown — who Scheyer said has “the best hands I’ve ever coached” — was integral to slowing Auburn’s All-American center, Johni Broome, the early front-runner for National Player of the Year. Brown’s ability to switch one through five blew up Auburn’s flex offense and helped hold Broome to 2-for-9 shooting in the first half.
Junior Tyrese Proctor hit clutch shot after clutch shot, none more so than a logo 3-pointer — as the shot clock expired — that gave Duke a five-point margin with 4:30 to play. Graduate guard Sion James, starting for the first time all season, chipped in five key rebounds and set the tone physically in what he later deemed “a man’s game.” And Caleb Foster, whose starting spot James took, added much needed scoring punch off the bench, probing Auburn’s defense to the tune of 11 points, tied for his second-most all season.
Parts, meet sum.
“We have enough talent,” Flagg added, “to compete with anyone in the country.”
Duke proved that definitively against Auburn. And Flagg proved, if he hadn’t already, that he can be the centerpiece of a team with Final Four ambitions. You can’t knock him for not being clutch anymore. One time, remember? And while Flagg won’t be perfect from here on out, here’s to betting on more finishes like Wednesday than he had against Kentucky.
To betting on growth, really.
If Duke came this far in a month, how high can it rise by March?
(Photo of Auburn’s Johni Broome and Duke’s Cooper Flagg: Lance King / Getty Images)
