Duke’s win over UNC proves it is more than Cooper Flagg, as Blue Devils knew all along
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In the aftermath of Friday’s fire drill — one that saw Duke hold off a North Carolina run for the ages and stay in the ACC Tournament title hunt — there was one question that kept cropping up.
It involved a freshman phenom who was sidelined with an ankle injury.
But it was about what the team did in his injured stead.
Did this game prove you were more than Cooper Flagg?
The short answer, as Duke players and head coach Jon Scheyer offered:
They already knew they were.
“It wasn’t nothing about that,” freshman guard and Charlotte-area native Isaiah Evans said in response to the question, shortly after his team’s 74-71 victory. “It was just about getting a win.”
Learn anything different with Flagg out?
“It was nothing that I didn’t know already,” he said with a smile. He was friendly but clear. “This is my team. I feel like I’m more familiar with them than y’all, so maybe y’all don’t know. But I know we’re like that.”
Flagg didn’t play on Friday. He wore a sweatsuit and sneakers and chain on his chest instead of his home Duke whites. This was because he rolled his ankle in Thursday’s contest against Georgia Tech — and that even though his X-rays came back negative, Scheyer opted to have his freshman manage the pain and the swelling from the sidelines instead of asking Flagg to play through it, citing the team’s larger goals that could come to fruition the first weekend in April.
Scheyer confirmed postgame, too, that Flagg would not play in the finale at 8:30 p.m. Saturday.
Saturday will mark the second game Flagg will not start in his college career. In those previous 32 starts, the 6-foot-9, 205-pound forward averaged 18.9 points on 48.8% shooting, 7.5 rebounds and 4.1 assists.
The first day Flagg didn’t start for Duke this season arrived Friday, against UNC — the game the Blue Devils found a way to stay poised even as the Tar Heels started on a 20-plus-point second-half run college basketball fans had seen a version of several times this year, in their contests against Dayton to Kansas to Florida to Michigan State.
Scheyer made it clear, too, that this team was built to win even without the best player in America.
“Overall, I thought our guys did a good job adjusting on the fly, and then we trust even when Cooper isn’t out there — Tyrese (Proctor), Kon (Knueppel), Isaiah, Sion (James) — we have other playmakers besides just Coop.
“But obviously, it’s different having him out there. I mean, of course.”
Scheyer said Flagg’s absence allowed UNC to switch off-ball and on-ball screens and play a more fluid man-to-man defense — a strategy that paid dividends in the second half as the Tar Heels forced steals and ran rampant to the basket.
“(Flagg’s) ability to break down defenders, and teams don’t usually want to switch him,” Scheyer said. “So what happened tonight, (UNC is) switching everything. They did a great job jamming us. And they’re athletic. ... They make it hard on you. So you have to make some plays to break down the defense.”
Not only did players accept everything Friday threw at them — they embraced it. And there was a lot of action, all of it culminating with Tar Heel big man Ven-Allen Lubin getting fouled with Duke clinging to a 72-71 lead with less than 10 seconds left, only to miss the first free throw and see the second be disqualified by a lane violation. Knueppel, who finished with 17 points on 5-for-11 shooting, said as much postgame. So did Proctor, who finished with 11 despite going 0-for-5 from the 3-point line.
“It’s awesome for us to have this type of adversity,” Knueppel said. “To be honest, we haven’t had a bunch of it this season, so it’s great. We don’t want the injuries, that sucks. But having the close games, close battles down the stretch are big.”
Such battles show what teams are made of “to the rest of the world,” as Evans said.
But there was nothing new to show the Duke locker room, the Blue Devils said. They already knew.
This story was originally published March 15, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Duke’s win over UNC proves it is more than Cooper Flagg, as Blue Devils knew all along."
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