The Champions Classic was so close to being the full-blown coronation of 17-year-old Duke Blue Devils sensation Cooper Flagg.
For the first 39 minutes and 30 seconds of Flagg’s first marquee college game, he was nothing short of superb. He put on film NBA move after NBA move, hunting mismatches, sinking tough midrange buckets, dominating the backboards. A better debut on the national stage couldn’t have been scripted.
And then the script fell apart spectacularly in that final half-minute.
Flagg got the ball out of a Duke timeout in a tie game and had it ripped away by Kentucky Wildcats wing Otega Oweh, who raced down the floor and was fouled. And after the two free throws gave Kentucky the lead, Flagg pushed the ball down the floor but quickly found himself in no-man’s land, eventually slipping out of bounds to give Kentucky possession with five seconds to go.
All of a sudden, “he’s only 17” took on a different meaning in the story of Tuesday’s epic showdown of bluebloods.
There are no fewer than a dozen tactical decisions by both coaches from this one that could be analyzed at length, from Mark Pope going small with Andrew Carr at center to Jon Scheyer’s end-of-game play designs and plenty more in between. But sometimes college basketball can be simplified into analysis any casual observer can make, and this result fits: Kentucky’s roster is as old as Duke’s is young.
Of Kentucky’s top eight minute-getters in Tuesday’s game, six were “super seniors” and none were freshmen. Its leading scorer, Carr, is less than three months from his 23rd birthday. Meanwhile, Duke relied on two freshmen, Flagg and 19-year-old Kon Knueppel, for 39 of its 71 field goals and 40 of its 72 points. A third freshman, Khaman Maluach (who’s just 18) was the Blue Devils’ most important player other than Flagg, but saw his contributions in the second half limited by cramping … an unfortunate trend for the Blue Devils—which Scheyer attributed to “young bodies” after the game. Kentucky’s roster may be new to its uniform with no scholarship holdovers from the John Calipari era, but the Wildcats are certainly not new to college basketball. That experience showed in both teams’ first real test of the 2024–25 season.
“The guys do most of the [halftime] fixing before I even get in the locker room,” Pope said. That’s not a common luxury in college basketball, but may turn into one of the Wildcats’ biggest advantages.
Pope inherited everything and nothing when he stepped into Calipari’s shoes in April, possessing a deep understanding of the passion that makes Kentucky the sport’s biggest pressure cooker but walking into a locker room with no roster. He built a hodgepodge of transfers, with previous stops in the starting lineup at Oklahoma, San Diego State, BYU, Wake Forest and Drexel. Amazingly, just one of those starters (Jaxson Robinson, who followed Pope from BYU) had led his team in scoring the previous season. The edict was clear: Pope was building a team, rather than a Calipari-esque collection of talent that had been known to underperform in March.
There are cons to that strategy, and for much of Tuesday, it felt like we were seeing them. Kentucky trailed at half by nine and was getting bludgeoned on the interior by Duke, outscored in the paint 28–6 at halftime. There was the other shoe: As explosive as Kentucky might look against Wright State or Bucknell, elite talent is the separator in high-level games like this one, and Duke had all the elite talent. The game teetered toward full Duke control, but the young Devils could never quite take full advantage.
One memorable sequence came midway through the second half when Flagg missed a pair of free throws with a chance to push the lead to double figures. Less than two minutes later, Kentucky was back within a possession after a three by Koby Brea (after his defender Sion James went down mid-play with an injury) and a three-point play by Lamont Butler. The Wildcats led for less than 20% of the game, but the Wildcats were nothing if not opportunistic as they applied more and more game pressure on Duke down the stretch.
“[Kentucky] showed incredible maturity,” Scheyer said. “Their experience came out in that second half, no question.”
Championships aren’t won in November, and nowhere is that more true than at Kentucky. Pope, still lacking an NCAA tournament win on his résumé, has much more to prove than that he can win Champions Classic games. But you couldn’t have scripted a better first big impression for the wider college basketball universe. You may not find a big-time coach in college sports with less of an ego than Pope, always one to deflect credit. He had Carr deliver the opening statement to the media postgame and sat there listening with a grin on his face, then later demonstrated his master understanding of the intricacies of the UK job when discussing soaking in the moment on the floor postgame.
“If Andrew has to carry around the burden of this being about him, it’s too big,” Pope said. “If Otega has to carry around the burden of this being about him, it’s too big, and it’s actually not very rewarding. When it can be about us, that’s when it’s magic. That’s the gospel. That’s life. This team has really adopted that … It’s all of [Big Blue Nation] showing up. It’s a brilliant thing, and we get to be at the best place in the world to do it.”
That answer, that approach had to be as much what athletic director Mitch Barnhart was betting on when he hitched the future of the program as Pope’s brilliant offensive concepts or impressive early Big 12 results at BYU. The uniforms look the same, but that’s where the similarities to Pope’s predecessor’s program end, and that couldn’t have been more evident in his first big moment as the leader of Big Blue Nation on Tuesday night.
And as for that Flagg coronation? It’s certainly coming, and we shouldn’t gloss past a 26-point, 12-rebound master class as normal even if it may become that for this teenage wunderkind. That said, Tuesday’s showing should at least slow down the raging hype machine that surrounds this youthful Duke group. Blue Devils legend Jay Williams was comparing this season’s Duke team to the juggernaut 2001 Devils at halftime of a game Duke didn’t even go on to win. The Flagg/Knueppel/Maluach trio is a special one with the ceiling to push for a national championship, but the work is far from finished to get this team there.
The Blue Devils’ guard play wasn’t nearly good enough Tuesday: Tyrese Proctor was quiet late after a big first half, while Caleb Foster had just four points on 2-of-9 shooting in a poor showing overall for the sophomore point guard. Nor was the three-point shooting, with Knueppel an uncharacteristic 1-of-8 from deep and Duke as a team just 4-of-23. Throwing the ball to Flagg late in games will likely be a winning strategy more times than not, but neither of those end-game possessions was the ideal look to maximize his strengths. If anything, they felt like a desperate plea for Flagg to bail the rest of the roster out.
But there will be plenty more opportunities to nitpick this Duke team. That’s what comes with the great expectations this group carries on its backs. In the meantime, what could have easily been a night for Flagg instead is defined by a collective Kentucky effort. It may start with the team’s folksy head coach, but success in Lexington this season will be defined by collective efforts like the one Tuesday.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Kentucky’s Veterans Are the Difference in Win Over Duke in Champions Classic.
