Duke Blue Devils: Freshman Guards Rule The Day
The Duke Blue Devils defeated the Wisconsin Badgers to win the NCAA Championship in Mens Basketball last night. In the battle of Duke’s freshmen versus the Badgers’ seniors, it was the youth who were served.
While senior guard Quinn Cook went thirty-five minutes and only scored six points, the burden of finding scoring outside of Jahlil Okafor and Justise Winslow was lifted from him. The source of this unexpected points addition was Grayson Allen, another Duke freshman.
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Allen shot 5 of eight from the field and made all five of his free throws to give the Blue Devils sixteen points that they desperately needed as they tried to claw back from small Wisconsin leads. Allen was probably the least expected element that played a starring role in the story.
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His backcourt mate Tyus Jones provided the rest of the heroics, coming up with big shots when Duke needed them. Duke had climbed ahead of Wisconisn 58-56 only to see Sam Dekker and Frank Kaminsky use two lay-ups to make the score 60-58. That small momentum turn could have been too much for Duke, but Jones nailed a twenty-five foot three pointer to retake the lead 61-60.
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Jones scored twenty-three on the night and all of his free throws (seven).
The Wisconsin backcourt of Josh Gasser and Bronson Koenig were less influential on the outcome. Koenig had ten points, but Gasser had none. Collectively the Badgers’ seniors scored twenty-eight points while the Duke freshmen put up sixty of Duke’s total.
Duke has won its fifth championship, all under Coach Mike Krzyzewski. I think that the 2010 title will always be his best coaching job, but he probably enjoyed this one a bit more. Now he has to figure whether his youngsters are all going to leave him, and who to replace them with if they. Allen probably starts next year.