By Brian Murphy, WRAL

Baylor Bears	66
1Duke Blue Devils	89
Final

Raleigh, N.C. — Duke is ranked No. 1, seeded No. 1 and equipped with at least three projected lottery picks, including the expected No. 1 overall pick.

The embarrassment of riches among the Blue Devils doesn’t stop there as junior guard Tyrese Proctor proved in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament in Raleigh when he went all “Steph Curry” in blowout wins.

Proctor made 14-of-17 3-point attempts in the two NCAA Tournament games at Lenovo Center, prompting Baylor coach Scott Drew to compare him to the Warriors’ sharpshooter and quip about him finding a new home after the Blue Devils’ 89-66 victory on Sunday.

“You make mistakes, they make you pay,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said. “Steph Curry was 7 for 8 today and 6 for 8 [in the NCAA Tournament games], so I don’t know if he’s transferring to NC State, but he was pretty good the last two games here.”

The tests, no doubt, will get harder as Duke advances in the tournament, but these Blue Devils have all the answers. Third-year coach Jon Scheyer deserves the credit for what he has built, though everyone associated with Duke knows that final validation only comes with a national championship.

The Blue Devils lost star freshman Cooper Flagg, the expected No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft, to an ankle injury and still won the ACC Tournament title. They were without defensive standout Maliq Brown, too, in that tournament and for the first two rounds in Raleigh.

Flagg’s all-around game — just a ho-hum 18 points, nine rebounds, six assists despite being poked in the eye early in the first half and picking up two fouls before halftime against Baylor — is what everything orbits around, the center of the Duke universe.

But the other pieces all fit and all shine. This weekend, it was Proctor, a third-year guard who survived the roster purge in the offseason and is having his most efficient season. In the ACC Tournament, it was freshman Kon Knueppel. He earned tournament MVP honors.

Freshman center Khaman Maluach, capable of defending on switches and at the rim, while being a menace on lobs. All-around force Sion James. Guard Caleb Foster has emerged of late. So, too, has reserve center Patrick Ngongba II. There are capable five-star recruits fighting for minutes. And on and on, up and down the roster.

“One through 11, it’s the best team I’ve ever been on,” Foster said.

Said James: “We have a lot of guys that can do a lot of things. So when Cooper goes down, we have guys step up in other ways that you might not necessarily need to when he’s on the floor. Just finding different ways to impact the game. That’s all of our big things. Just figure it out. Whatever it takes to win on this given day, just do that.”

There are teams, and Scheyer will tell you his first two Duke teams fit into this category, who can beat you one way. Maybe, two. His first Duke team had defensive length, but struggled to score. His second solved the offensive issue, but wasn’t big enough.

This one is just right.

“You try to be as well balanced as possible,” Scheyer said during the weekend. “You want to have depth wherever you can while you don’t want to have too much. You want guys feeling like they have a chance to play all the time and all that.

“I think the biggest thing with this roster was the versatility and the competitiveness. We wanted guys that weren’t afraid of fighting for playing time. We wanted versatility where we could really switch a lot on the defensive end. That’s been a huge strength of ours having the positional size and the versatility on defense.”

Add it up and you get a team that, at least according to the trusted Ken Pomeroy rankings, is the best college basketball team since the 1999 Duke team. That loaded squad … lost in the national title game, a reminder that nothing is guaranteed in March.

Even for a team that has all the right answers.

Source: wralsportsfan.com