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Cooper Flagg has Duke flying high, but the Blue Devils’ unselfishness is what has them soaring to the next level
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DURHAM, N.C. – The 2 best basketball players in the ACC went head-to-head at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Saturday.
Statistically, there wasn’t a lot of difference between Duke’s Cooper Flagg and Stanford’s Maxime Raynaud. They both scored 19 points and they both had a similar number of rebounds (Raynaud 7, Flagg 5).
But that’s where any comparison starts and ends.
The Blue Devils’ star freshman got his 19 points on 8 fewer shots and dominated every other statistical category by filling the score sheet with 6 assists, a pair of steals and no turnovers in Duke’s 106-70 demolition of the Cardinal.
To be fair, though, neither the game itself nor the 1-on-1 battle between the only 2 realistic candidates for ACC Player of the Year was a fair fight.
While Raynaud is very good at scoring and rebounding – he’s the only player in the conference averaging a double-double – Flagg is exceptional at everything.
And that’s not even the thing that most sets him apart from virtually everyone else in the college game this season.
As coach Jon Scheyer tells it, it doesn’t matter if Flagg scores 19 points or none. Or whether he leads the team in rebounds, assists or anything else.
He’s all about the numbers on the scoreboard.
“When your best player literally does not care about statistics, how can everybody else care about statistics? And Cooper does not care,” Scheyer said after his third-ranked team won for the 18th time in its last 19 games. “He cares about winning and I think that’s contagious.”
The unselfishness was definitely catching on Saturday.
The Blue Devils had 23 assists on 40 baskets against the Cardinal, including multiple lobs into the post that resulted in dunks for 7-foot-2 freshman Khaman Maluach and seamless ball movement that led to open 3-point looks for Tyrese Proctor and others. They also shot 62.5% from the floor (going 14-of-29 from 3-point range) while committing only 5 turnovers.
Besides Flagg, 4 other players scored in double figures in one of Duke’s most complete efforts of the season.
“One of our biggest strengths is that we have talent all over the floor and one of the ways we play well is by getting the talent the ball,” senior guard Sion James said. “The game is really simple when we let it be. And today was one of those days we let it be.”
That might have something to do with the competition. While Stanford is hardly the worst team in the ACC at 16-10 (8-7), it’s not as if the matchup was anything close to what No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Auburn were facing when they went up against each other around the same time on Saturday.
But the near-flawless performance was still significant in that it came just 1 week after a loss at Clemson that at least planted some seeds of doubt about the Blue Devils’ legitimacy as a national championship favorite.
It’s not so much that Duke lost the game. The Tigers went to the Elite Eight last season, are ranked 23rd this year and were playing at home before a rabid sell-out crowd. And the game ended up going down to the next-to-last possession.
It’s the way the Blue Devils lost that caused the concern.
Duke came into that game ranked second in KenPom’s defensive efficiency rating. But Clemson essentially had its way with the Blue Devils, especially around the rim, while becoming the first team this season to shoot better than 50% from the floor against Duke.
Scheyer challenged his team after the game, saying that the Blue Devils needed to make the loss “mean something” by learning from it.
Saturday’s performance, in which they held Stanford to just 38% shooting and outscored the Cardinal 42-16 in the paint, suggests that Flagg and his teammates have turned the setback from a negative to a positive by answering their coach’s challenge and growing from it.
This isn’t the first time the Blue Devils have risen to the occasion at a crossroads in their season. They also did it earlier in the year after close losses to Kentucky and Kansas.
“The fact that our team has always responded, which they have at a high level, has allowed us to get better and make a jump,” Scheyer said. “I could talk about the character of the guys all day. I think that’s what’s allowed this to happen with the growth and our team’s development.”
It’s a trait that should come in handy down the road in March, when every team is faced with adversity and no safety net to catch it if it should fall. Even those with designs on replacing their 1-and-done Flagg with another banner to hang permanently from the rafters at Cameron.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
