Tide Rolled: Duke Smokes Alabama On The Way To The 2025 Final Four

This team is something else.

Duke absolutely strangled Alabama in the East Regional finals, winning 85-65 and holding Alabama to just 35.4% overall and just 25.0% for threes. That’s 48 points less than they hung on BYU on Thursday.

It was really a tour de force by the Blue Devils, not least of all Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach, who were both brilliant.

On their end, the Blue Devils hit 53.6 percent overall and 46.2 percent from behind the line.

Knueppel finished with 21 points. Cooper Flagg had 16 while Maluach finished with 14. Both Flagg and Maluach had nine rebounds.

Alabama wasn’t likely to hit 25 threes again as they did against BYU, but this is a very dangerous offensive team and Duke basically punked them. Mark Seasons, who hit ten from the bonusphere against the Cougars, finished with just six points total - and shot 1-6 for his threes.

‘Bama didn’t hit a shot - any shot - from the floor from the 8:03 mark to the 2:16 mark. Duke’s defense was just stifling.

As we thought, with Nate Oats focusing almost exclusively on threes and layups, Maluach took away the inside and Duke’s excellent perimeter defense made threes very difficult.

And while Flagg didn’t have his best game, it wasn’t like he was awful. He was just...normal. And normal for him is still pretty damn good. And everyone else was pretty damn good too.

After a poor outing against Arizona, Tyrese Proctor hit 7-10. Caleb Foster hit 2-3 in 15 minutes of action. Patrick Ngongba picked Alabama’s defense apart with three beautiful assists as he continues to let the world know a simple fact: he’s not a good passer. He’s a great passer.

In fact, five Blue Devils had at least two assists: Knueppel had five, while Flagg and Foster had three and Proctor had two. Duke assisted on 19 of 30 shots.

Not that it was a perfect game. Duke had 13 turnovers, which is high by recent standards, and in the closing minutes gave Alabama a glimpse of a potential comeback: Flagg turned the ball over with 2:22 left and then again about :23 seconds later. Alabama scored on both to cut the lead to 78-61.

It didn't matter in the end, but from Jon Scheyer’s point of view, it was unacceptably careless. They’ll be talking about that this week.

Speaking of Scheyer, he has now gone from the Sweet Sixteen to the Elite Eight to the Final Four. That’s pretty impressive for his first three years. He’s also now tied with Brad Underwood and Brad Stevens for the most ever wins in a coach’s first three seasons with 89.

He’s put his stamp on this program and done something that seemed impossible and is incredibly difficult: he’s escaped Mike Krzyzewski’s long shadow. And when you look at schools that have replaced legends - UCLA with John Wooden, UNC with Dean Smith, Indiana with Bob Knight and most recently Villanova with Jay Wright - no one has ever done it this well.

Congratulations to Coach Scheyer and his Blue Devils. No matter what happens in San Antonio, it’s been a beautiful and memorable season.