By Brian Murphy, WRAL

There is a suddenness to this magnificent tournament, three weeks of madness stretching through March and into early April. Years of practice, months of games, weeks of anticipation, days of preparation and hours of play undone in a moment.

It can be a blur.

What just happened?

What just happened to Duke, the nation’s No. 1 team, and Cooper Flagg, the nation’s No. 1 college basketball player?

Duke led Houston in the national semifinals of the NCAA Tournament in San Antonio by 14 with 8:17 remaining in the second half. Make your plans for Monday night’s title game. They led by nine with 3:03 remaining, seemingly having weathered Houston’s best shot. They led by six with 1:14 remaining. A few free throws and it’s a wrap.

Moments later, Duke’s Tyrese Proctor was flinging a last-second desperation heave — and Houston was celebrating a 70-67 victory.

It’s over. Duke’s season. Its national title chase. Flagg’s college career. And others, too.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “It’s incredibly disappointing. There’s a lot of pain that comes with this.”

A collapse like that never comes down to one play, though the questionable over-the-back call on Flagg that put Houston on the free-throw line for the go-ahead free throws will likely stand out in the years to come.

You can point to others. Mason Gillis’ second-half technical foul that turned into a six-point Houston possession. Proctor’s miss on the front-end of a 1-and-1 with 19 seconds left that preceded the Flagg foul call. Duke’s struggles to inbound the basketball throughout the late stages of the game. Flagg’s final shot hitting the front of the rim.

“I’m reflecting right now what else I could have said or done,” Scheyer said after the game. “I’m sure there’s a lot more that I could have done to help our guys at the end there. That’s the thing that kills me the most.

“The amount of game situations we’ve watched this year. We haven’t had the real-life experience all the time, but that’s something I really felt we prepared for. So I feel like I let our guys down in that regard.”

Duke (35-4) hasn’t played a ton of close games this year, dominating competition in the lackluster ACC for most of the last few months. In the Blue Devils’ previous three losses (close losses to Kentucky, Kansas and Clemson), Flagg committed a turnover in the final minute or final seconds.

On Saturday, the consensus national player of the year and expected No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft got the shot he wanted with eight seconds left.

“A shot I’m willing to live with in the scenario,” said Flagg, who had a stellar all-around game with 27 points, seven rebounds, four assists, three blocks and two steals.

Seven-foot-2 center Khaman Maluach had zero rebounds in 21 minutes. Proctor, who couldn’t miss from 3-point range in the first two rounds, was 0-for-4 from distance. Outside of Maliq Brown, the Blue Devils got basically nothing — zero points — from its bench, a strength of this Duke team throughout the year.

And still for 38 minutes, the Blue Devils led, seemingly on their way to play for their sixth national championship — and first since 2015 — in Scheyer’s third season since replacing legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski and with a team built around freshmen in an era of fifth- and sixth-year players.

“We were all-in on bringing banner No. 6 back to Cameron Indoor Stadium,” said Duke’s Sion James, “and it hurts that we didn’t get a chance to do that.”

And now it’s done. Scheyer and Duke will, no doubt, be back. But not this version of the Blue Devils. In a bygone era, this would be just the beginning for Flagg and Maluach and fellow freshman Kon Knueppel at Duke.

Instead, it is the end. Sudden. Unexpected. Shocking, even.

“It’s been a magical ride,” Scheyer said on CBS after the game. “We believed, with everything we had, we were going to win a championship here.”

Source: wralsportsfan.com