Duke’s second-half surge pushes Blue Devils past Louisville for 23rd ACC championship

Late in the second half, Louisville schemed open the matchup it wanted: the Cardinals’ unrelenting guard, Terrence Edwards Jr., one-on-one against Duke’s 7-foot-2 Khaman Maluach.

A speedster against a big. Louisville’s unstoppable force Saturday on the perimeter, on an island, in need of a key bucket to keep the ACC Tournament final within reach as the game neared its end.

But as the Cardinals’ guard and leader-of-all-scorers Saturday rose up for a layup, Maluach swatted the chance away. Louisville had done everything right — but in the end, no matter who played, no matter who guarded who, it was Duke that stood tallest on Saturday, as it had all season.

The Blue Devils defeated Louisville, 73-62, in Spectrum Center in Charlotte. The win came with National Player of the Year candidate Cooper Flagg and the team’s second-best defender, Maliq Brown, on the bench. It came 24 hours after a gritty win over North Carolina, one that a lesser team would’ve had a hangover from.

And it came decisively — thanks to a 15-2 second-half run that erased a five-point halftime deficit to make room for history.

”I mean, that’s what Duke defense means, us getting stops and us stepping up in such moments,” Maluach said postgame, referencing that play. “Especially in such (isolations), because I knew Terrence Edwards had it going in the first half, so I knew I had to step up for my teammates and step up for my team and get that stop.”

Duke will enter the NCAA Tournament sitting at 31-3 on the year, having won every trophy it could. The Blue Devils’ 36th ACC Tournament championship appearance ended in a 23rd title, as well as head coach Jon Scheyer’s second ACC championship in three years — and came a few weeks after it secured the ACC regular-season title, too.

The AP-ranked No. 1 Blue Devils were led by Tyrese Proctor, who bounced back after a few rough shooting nights to end with 19 points on 6-of-14 shooting. Kon Knueppel added 18 points, and Sion James added 15. The team shot 44% from the field, 37% from 3 and shot 24 free throws — all outpacing the Cardinals.

Edwards led Louisville with 29 points — including 15 in the first half — and ACC Defensive Player of the Year Chucky Hepburn added 14.

Duke summoned grit when it needed to

Duke’s second-half dominance wouldn’t have happened without a first-half scare.

The first half, in many ways, belonged to Louisville. Really, it belonged to Edwards.

After Hepburn scored Louisville’s first seven points, he handed the proverbial mantle to his backcourt mate, who put on a show to the tune of 15 points on 6-of-12 shooting and 3 of 5 from 3. That continued in the early part of the second half. Everything fell. One bordered on ridiculous: With the shot clock winding down just ahead of the second-half under-16 timeout, he sized up James, one of Duke’s best perimeter defenders, picked up his dribble, rose up and flung up and buried a prayer — and mean-mugged to the crowd behind the Duke bench to underscore such a moment.

But wells against Duke only run so deep. The game turned with about 13 minutes to go. The Blue Devils went on a 7-0 run that featured four free throws, a Patrick Ngongba block, Scheyer asking the Spectrum Center’s neutral-in-name-only crowd for noise, and a James corner three to give Duke a 52-47 lead. That margin — five points — was the most it had all game up until that point.

A Louisville timeout didn’t stunt any Duke momentum. Not immediately, anyway. The 7-0 run ballooned to a 15-2 run that defined the contest. And even when Louisville head coach Pat Kelsey’s offense took advantage of Duke’s second-half adjustment of blitzing ball screens into oblivion — a key tactical decision — Duke’s players won, again and again, down the stretch.

“I think I screwed us up a little bit in the first half,” Scheyer said. “I thought our defense was actually pretty good, and they hit tough shots, and I probably overreacted, and we went zone and it was awful. …

“In the second half, we did what we do, and again, that doesn’t mean we don’t change ball screen coverages. Edwards really had it going, so we stayed with him a little bit more when, typically, we like to get back, and Khaman does a great job protecting our rim.

“But to me, that was the only option for us, and we did a great job.”

Scheyer ‘not running from’ national championship expectations

Duke has lived up to the wild expectations bestowed upon it up until this point. And Scheyer told reporters after the game that Flagg will be available for the start of March Madness.

“I can tell you that that’s exactly my intention,” Scheyer said of Flagg’s playing time. “It’s the same thing. I think it’s trending in a great way where Cooper will be ready to go right away in the NCAA Tournament.”

But how much higher can the expectations rise? At this point, after Saturday’s spectacle, is it Final Four or bust?

“I mean, look, that’s obviously the goal,” Scheyer said. “There’s no question about it. But I don’t think — I just don’t think of it that way. I just think about it — I’m not running from that, either, and don’t get me wrong, that’s what we want to do. But just for us, we’ve approached this whole year, finish what’s right in front of you, and that’s the same thing.”

The royal-blue and white confetti rained down shortly after the final buzzer. There were familiar characters and expected storylines playing out on the makeshift stage in Spectrum Center, no doubt.

There was Scheyer, holding up the trophy with a big smile. There was Flagg, among his teammates. There was a Blue Devils crowd accustomed to program greatness chanting in unison for a sixth national championship: “We want six! We want six!”

But this was the background in a moment where the foreground was all a tad different than what was expected from them in November: players stepping up in unexpected ways, a team with the highest point margin in the country (+21.1) heading into Saturday’s contest sweating out a semifinal and white-knuckling a championship with defense and grit.

Knueppel was the one with the ACC Tournament MVP, and he embodied that mix of what was expected and what happened — a different means to the same end — when he stood up there and took an interview with ESPN.

His final answer on the stage:

“Two down,” he said, smiling. “One to go.”

This story was originally published March 15, 2025 at 10:52 PM with the headline "Duke’s second-half surge pushes Blue Devils past Louisville for 23rd ACC championship."

Alex Zietlow

The Charlotte Observer

Alex Zietlow writes about the Carolina Panthers and the ways in which sports intersect with life for The Charlotte Observer, where he has been a reporter since August 2022. Zietlow’s work has been honored by the Pro Football Writers Association, the N.C. and S.C. Press Associations, as well as the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) group. He’s earned six APSE Top 10 distinctions for his coverage on a variety of topics, from billion-dollar stadium renovations to the small moments of triumph that helped a Panthers kicker defy the steepest odds in sports. Zietlow previously wrote for The Herald in Rock Hill (S.C.) from 2019-22. Support my work with a digital subscription