Remember, this is a group that checked out early in the first round a year
ago against VCU in what capped off a miserable season in Durham.
"With the way it turned out last year, we don't take anyone for
granted," Duke sophomore point guard Greg Paulus said. "No one."
Maybe not the Duke holdovers that went through the loss a year ago, but Blue
Devils freshman Kyle Singler admitted that maybe he and his teammates might just
have been looking toward the second round a bit prematurely.
"We kind of overlooked them and you can't do that," Singler said.
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski showered Belmont and its coach, Rick Byrd, with
praise, and it was all warranted. He said that out of the 89 NCAA tournament
games he's coached, it ranked in the top three or four in terms of pressure.
The Bruins went toe-to-toe and had a lead in the waning seconds until Gerald Henderson Jr. took it the length of the floor for a layup that gave Duke the
71-70 lead, which was also the final score.
For Duke, it was almost like looking in the mirror. Belmont launched shots
from beyond the 3-point line at an alarming rate, and didn't boast much size.
Byrd's team spreads and stretches the floor, with everyone on his team being
able to shoot the ball from the perimeter.
However, there's one major difference: Henderson.
Coach K basically put the fate of this year's team in the hands of the
ultra-athletic sophomore wing. He took over the game late in the second half,
and won the game with his drive with 11.9 seconds remaining. Belmont, a group of
skilled players, didn't have anyone to match Henderson's explosiveness.
"G (Gerald) made one of the great plays for us this year,"
Krzyzewski said.
At one point, this was a Duke team that climbed all the way to No. 2 in the
national polls. Some (myself included) thought this club had an outside shot at
contending for the national title. The Blue Devils are 28-5 now and are a
completely different team from the one that was plagued by chemistry issues a
year ago, but the results were nearly identical.
The leadership is much-improved from a year ago, even in the near-loss to
Belmont.
However, senior DeMarcus Nelson was a complete non-factor. The supposed-
leader of the team finished with just two points. Point guard Greg Paulus had
just one assist and the Blue Devils made just 6-of-21 trifectas overall.
"There's a tomorrow," Nelson said. "We live to fight another
day."
Maybe it was just a matchup problem against Belmont. Or maybe it was that the
Blue Devils looked stronger than they actually are in an ACC that was mediocre
beyond North Carolina.
Whatever the case, Duke didn't just look vulnerable on Thursday night —
they looked like the lower seed for much of the game.
The crowd in the Verizon Center rallied around the underdogs, and it wasn't
much of a surprise. It almost always happens when a low seed hangs around with
one of the big boys. When you add Duke into the equation, there's even more
support for the Cinderella story.
It's what the NCAA tournament is all about, in terms of the emotion. While
the majority of the crowd wanted to see the upset, the Blue Devils stayed alive
— at least for now.
"Belmont's a good team, not great," Singler said. "It was a
game that wasn't expected, but it happened."
A year ago, Duke saw its string of nine consecutive Sweet 16 appearances come
to a crashing halt. This year, the Blue Devils nearly started another streak
with back-to-back first-round exits.
"It's an unpredictable tournament," Krzyzewski said.
He's right, especially for the Blue Devils nowadays.
Jeff Goodman is a senior college basketball writer for FOXSports.com. He
can be reached at GoodmanonFOX@aol.com
or check out his blog, Good
'N Plenty.