The scene felt funereal. In April, minutes after Duke’s collapse in the NCAA semifinal against Houston, a contingent of Blue Devils motored down a back hall of the Alamodome on a golf cart. Coach Jon Scheyer, flanked by freshman wing Kon Knueppel, was stuffed in the middle row. As the cart hummed down the quiet hallway, Cooper Flagg appeared on the back, still in his sweat-soaked uniform, staring vacantly in the direction he came. The images, captured by dozens of camera phones, quickly went viral. Flagg can’t recall what he was thinking in that moment. Just that, whatever it was, he didn’t want anyone to know it. “It was an incredible season,” Flagg later told reporters. “Didn’t end the way we wanted to.”
Weeks later Flagg still struggles to explain why. Up six points with 35 seconds left, Duke appeared to have a spot in the national title game locked up. Then a Houston three-pointer sliced the lead in half. A blown inbounds pass led to a dunk that cut it to one. On the next possession, Flagg was whistled for going over the back after the Blue Devils’ Tyrese Proctor missed the front end of a one-and-one. Two free throws at the other end gave the Cougars a one-point lead. With 15 seconds left, Duke put the ball in the hands of Flagg. He drove baseline, spun to the middle, pulled up from nine feet … and missed off the front of the rim. No shot at a national title. No regrets, it should be noted, either. “There’s certain things that I replay from that game,” Scheyer says. “That’s not one of them. You trust the ball in Cooper’s hands.”
