Next Up - Alabama In The 2025 Elite Eight

As Duke prepares to defend against a superb three point shooting team.

Duke faces Alabama in the Elite Eight Saturday and after Thursday’s offensive eruption against BYU, it doesn’t look like an easy challenge.

Alabama just hammered BYU, racking up 113 points, winning by 25 and hitting 25-51 on their threes as Nate Oats’ infatuation with the long shot pays off.

As you may know, Oats instructs his team that he wants either layups or threes and so far in the tournament, ‘Bama has hit exactly three mid-range shots. Clearly, they’re listening.

Our first impulse after looking at the box score on Thursday was to see that Alabama hit 21 threes and just 10 layups/dunks/chippies and that Khaman Maluach, Cooper Flagg and, hopefully, Maliq Brown could shut the interior down.

Then you do the math and realize that if you shaved those 20 points off, Alabama still would have won, 93-88.

Still, it underscores how crazy Oats’ offense is and what a unique challenge it is. Is Duke well-equipped to handle it?

Might be.

Duke matches up well size-wise as they usually do this year. Alabama’s bigs - Grant Nelson and Clifford Omoruyi - are both 6-11. Labaron Phillips and Chris Youngblood are both 6-4 while Mark Sears is 6-1. And while Sears got most of the attention after his epic three point game against BYU, Youngblood hit 5-11 for his threes and 6-1 sophomore (and Charlotte native) Aden Holloway came off the bench to hit 6-13.

So it’s going to be a challenge.

Coaches look at this with vastly more subtlety than most of us do, but we can all see that Alabama is a smaller team that got 63 points on threes from three guards who collectively shot 21-40 and ‘Bama hit a wild 25-51 overall.

Obviously Alabama puts a lot of thought and effort into getting open shooters and they really move the ball very well and we’re not saying that it’ll be easy to stop their offensive onslaught. Just look at their record: they hung 100 on Illinois, 85 on Houston, 94 on UNC, 102 on Kentucky and 93 on Auburn in the SEC tournament.

But some teams held them down.

• McNeese held them to 72 in an eight-point loss where ‘Bama shot 11-34 for threes.
• UNC held them to 12-33 from behind the line in their 94-79 loss.
• Ole Miss won 74-64 and Alabama hit 5-20 from deep.
• And Tennessee won 79-76, holding the Crimson Tide to 9-24 on threes.

None of these teams have the rim protection that Duke has, which theoretically should allow the Blue Devils to extend the defense, and Duke’s defenders are bigger than Alabama’s perimeter snipers.

Of course it may not matter.

Kentucky’s offense is probably the closest analog that Duke has seen to Alabama's and the Wildcats got plenty of open threes against the Blue Devils.

Alabama moved the ball beautifully against BYU, but there were some chinks in the armor, some of which Richie Saunders exploited with four steals. And it’s worth noting that BYU was down just 68-61 with 13:23 to play (on the other hand, Alabama scored 45 points to close out the game, which is just incredible).

What this game may come down to is how well Duke understands Alabama's offensive ball movement and how well they can disrupt it. As Bill Russell said, you don’t have to shut people down completely. You can just change things. You can push someone a few inches out of their normal range and significantly depress their shooting percentage. You can run Shaquille O’ Neal until he drops. You can close out on shooters and make them adjust with similar results.

If Duke stays out of foul trouble, they should be able to defend the interior pretty well. We’re not sure anyone is going to shut down Alabama’s perimeter game, but if you can control it, as Houston (11-30) did in November and St.Mary’s did earlier in the tournament (7-17) then your odds go up.

And of course, Alabama has to defend too. Duke is a good three point shooting team, but they don’t take as many as the Tide does. Duke hit 10-27 against Louisville, 14-37 against Mount St. Mary’s, 12-22 against Baylor and 11-19 against Arizona.

Duke’s offense is clicking at nearly the same level UConn’s did for the last couple of years in NCAA play. Duke is finding Maluach and Patrick Ngongba around the basket. Kon Knueppel, Tyrese Proctor and Sion James are all finding shots. And you certainly can’t ignore Mason Gillis, Isaiah Evans or Caleb Foster, all of whom are capable of hurting you.

And what Cooper Flagg did against Arizona was hugely impressive, with terms like “master class” being tossed around. Duke fans have watched him more closely than most of course and what we’ve seen is the sign of a truly great player: he makes his teammates better. That stretch in the second half where he found Maluach for two lobs and Patrick Ngongba for another was a statement. Flagg hit that long three before halftime and that was another statement. So was that ferocious block late in the second half, though we wish he had just caught it instead of throwing it out of bounds. There is no more deflating play in basketball than simply catching a shot and starting a break. What can you do at that point? It’s devastating.

We’ve watched Flagg closely and his game is still unfolding. Arizona pushed him to another level and he responded.

What we’re saying is that fans understand Flagg is, to use the current term, generational, but as much as we’ve seen...we haven't seen everything. Tournament play is pushing him to greatness.

Let’s hope it continues.