RALEIGH—He’s fine. Maybe even more than fine.
There was a budding notion last Sunday when the NCAA men’s tournament bracket was announced that the Duke Blue Devils were not, as their No. 1 seed in the East Region would suggest, one of the favorites to cut down the nets in San Antonio next month. Yes, that team atop the AP poll, the one with a couple of prospective NBA draft lottery picks in the starting lineup that put together one of the most efficient seasons ever in ACC conference play—they actually were susceptible to a potential upset in the next few weeks.
There was just one reason for that line of thinking, and it came down to the image of star freshman Cooper Flagg being wheeled around in a wheelchair after an ankle injury in the ACC tournament. The likely No. 1 pick this summer spent last week in Charlotte as a glorified cheerleader and, with the program playing coy about his status moving forward, there was a bit of doubt the Blue Devils had all they needed to survive and advance a few times in the Big Dance.
It turns out, Flagg is fine. Duke is more than fine, too. If there was any lingering doubt about that, well, it’s time to be disabused of such a notion. You can probably consider it fully squashed now.
It’s hard to draw any other conclusion if you caught any of the Blue Devils’ 93–49 destruction of the 16th-seeded Mount St. Mary’s Mountaineers in the opening round of 64 on Friday afternoon.
“It was a workmanlike performance by our team,” coach Jon Scheyer said quite matter of factly. “Really good to get our feet wet and understand what the tournament was all about.”
Indeed, there was nothing special about a typical top seed drubbing a team that just barely made it into the main draw of the Big Dance and had to take on one of the sport’s historic bluebloods in the Lenovo Center, just down the road from Duke’s idyllic campus. But this was not just a regular No. 1.vs.16 matchup with table stakes.
This was a game that had a just a little more, in the grand scheme of college basketball this year, riding on it beyond the final score because it doubled as Flagg’s tournament debut and his return from having a giant welt on his left ankle after rolling it off the foot of a Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets player eight days ago.
“I think what I would say is I’ve done a great job with the medical staff preparing and just being ready,” Flagg said. “So I already felt completely 100% and confident going into tonight’s game.”
Seems like it. Fourteen points, seven rebounds, four assists and a pair of blocked shots after playing an efficient 22 minutes? That does seem close to 100% for a player who led Duke in nearly every major statistical category.
Perhaps the only thing that didn’t go exactly as planned was for Flagg to check out at the 10:53 mark in the second half and end up with so few minutes on the court, with the team mostly in cruise control the rest of the way over the MAAC champions. Scheyer said there was an anticipation of Flagg actually playing more, but naturally there’s only so much a coach can do in terms of dictating his minutes when the entire roster ends up shooting 50% from the field and turns the ball over just twice in an entire game they led by as many as 46 points.
“The biggest thing for me was him not pacing. I didn’t want him to pace. Then obviously making sure he was moving, where he wasn’t off balance or favoring one leg or the other,” Scheyer said. “We had already addressed that before this game, so that wasn’t a big concern. I was just making sure he wasn’t pacing. Obviously giving him a few extra minutes, I’m sure that’s going to be helpful for Sunday. As it got down in the second half, my thing was to limit his minutes as much as possible.”
He may have had limited minutes, but there was not a limited Flagg. He was very much his usual self, showcasing his wares as the future No. 1 overall pick in rejecting a couple of shots or throwing some lobs to big man Khaman Maluach, who ended up making every shot he took for 11 points in just 15 minutes of action.
Perhaps the greatest comfort for Scheyer—and the biggest worry for the rest of the field—was simply that Flagg’s return didn’t disrupt any sort of rhythm on either side of the court for the team.
The tallest team in the bracket clamped down on the Mountaineers throughout, with even the team’s deep bench helping contribute to an eight-minute scoring drought for Mount St. Mary’s in the second half that fueled a closing 28–8 run down the stretch, nearly all with starters like Flagg on the bench. Guard Tyrese Proctor benefited from additional spacing to pour in a game-high 19 points, helped by a 6-of-8 effort from beyond the arc that balanced out the other five-star freshman, Kon Knueppel, sustaining a small knock that won’t keep him out but did limit his contribution to just six points.
Scheyer, who said the wing was fine and held to just 19 minutes only for precautionary reasons, still benefited from the team’s 10th victory of 30-plus points this season and 12th straight win overall.
Flagg looked like, well, Flagg. Duke, which has lost just once since Thanksgiving, looked like that Duke team more than anything, too.
“I’ve been on many sides of this in my playing days, coaching days—you don’t take any game for granted. I think it’s very easy to say, yeah, [Flagg] should just rest. Well, you want to have your best team, and you’re not promised the next game,” Scheyer said. “I didn’t think he looked like it, but you have some natural rust. Just the game experience, I think, is really important to understand what the tournament is like.”
That point was hammered home late in the game, when the very heavy Duke crowd saw 5' 8" walk-on Spencer Hubbard preparing to check in during the final minutes to send everyone on their feet. They stayed there, mostly, all the way up until when the fifth-year player, who rarely sees the court, dropped a beautiful finger roll in with under a minute left for the biggest cheer of the afternoon.
You would have thought that would have come when Flagg was warming up with everybody in the arena staring at him jogging around the court. Or when he was throwing down a dunk. Or when he knocked down his only three-pointer of the game.
Alas, it was quickly apparent to all involved in Raleigh this week that he was fine. So is Duke.
For all the other national title contenders out there, to say nothing of their upcoming opponent in the Baylor Bears on Sunday, that’s not the kind of March moment they were hoping to get in the rout of Mount St. Mary’s.
More March Madness on Sports Illustrated
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Cooper Flagg Lets NCAA Tournament Field Know He’s Just Fine.
