Tuesday, 7 April 2015

Duke Defeats Wisconsin to Win NCAA Men's Basketball Championship - New York Times




Duke players after their 68-63 victory over Wisconsin on Monday night. Jahlil Okafor (15), the Blue Devils’ freshman center, overcame foul trouble and scored 10 points. David J. Phillip/Associated Press



INDIANAPOLIS — This Duke team was forged not over years but months, weeks, days. Its genesis was a Friday afternoon in November 2013, when the star high schoolers Tyus Jones and Jahlil Okafor coordinated their commitments to Coach Mike Krzyzewski and a Blue Devils program that was changing before his eyes.


Did it matter that Okafor and Jones — college basketball’s most celebrated recruiting package perhaps since Greg Oden and Mike Conley headed to Ohio State — seemed likely to stay for just a year? Only in that it required Krzyzewski to use the CliffsNotes versions of his pearls of wisdom and teach teenagers how to win.



Twenty-four years after earning his first national title in Indianapolis with a fearless and unlikely group, Krzyzewski returned to the city as a practitioner of changed methods for a changed game. He had a talented team, that much was clear. But whether it could withstand the rigor of battling Wisconsin — a team brimming with confidence after undoing Kentucky’s perfect season — depended on how well how well Krzyzewski had prepared his freshmen to play like veterans.




The freshman Grayson Allen, shooting over Sam Dekker, had 16 points off the bench. The Blue Devils trailed by 9 in the second half. David J. Phillip/Associated Press


On Monday, there was nothing left to doubt. With all four freshmen in double figures, Duke stifled Wisconsin, 68-63, rallying from a 9-point deficit with 13 minutes remaining to win another N.C.A.A. tournament final at Lucas Oil Stadium.


“I don’t know how you can be any better than we were down the stretch,” said Krzyzewski, who earned his fifth championship, moving him alone into second place behind John Wooden (10).


It came against the odds, with his team sputtering out of halftime and Wisconsin — in an arena heavily tilted toward the Badgers’ side — appearing ready to pull away. Okafor picked up his fourth foul, casting him to the bench, and the Blue Devils turned to Jones and Grayson Allen, an oft-overlooked reserve guard, to stir up the offense.


In the huddle, Krzyzewski pleaded for more activity, less standing around. “Start playing,” he told them, and they did.


Allen sprang into action, literally, using his pogo-stick athleticism to propel himself to the rim on each possession. And with Okafor out, Duke’s spacing seemed to improve, opening up shots for Jones, who connected on almost every one. Within minutes, Duke was back in the game.


“These guys aren’t freshmen,” the assistant coach Jon Scheyer said. “They’re not.”


Wisconsin, which had only one national championship to its credit (1941), passed through a gantlet to get to this point, with victories over North Carolina, Arizona and, most notably, undefeated Kentucky on Saturday night.


That left the Badgers confronting an understandable hangover. Focusing on the task at hand can be difficult when 5,000 cheering fans show up in the lobby of your hotel.


Coach Bo Ryan received messages reminding him of the 1980 United States Olympic hockey team, which unforgettably upset the Soviet Union but then needed to regroup for a game against Finland to fulfill its gold medal aspirations.


“Finland is Duke,” Ryan said Sunday — perhaps the strangest phrase uttered all tournament.


The Blue Devils won at Wisconsin on Dec. 3, thrusting them into the conversation of title contenders. The victory might have cloaked them with a false air of invincibility, too. Unbeaten before Jan. 11, the Blue Devils lost two games in a row, to North Carolina State and Miami, and suddenly their confidence slipped away.


Quinn Cook, the team’s only senior, called a team meeting at his off-campus home, for players only. They watched television and relaxed. Cook assured them they would be fine.


“I think that was a big thing for our season,” he said Friday. “Guys responded and kind of got the edge back that we needed.”




Duke’s Amile Jefferson blocked a shot by Wisconsin’s Josh Gasser in the first half. Robert Deutsch/USA Today Sports, via Reuters


Scheyer, a Duke assistant who played for the Blue Devils’ 2010 title team, said, “It was a season changer.”


On Monday, Wisconsin opened the game uneasily. Sam Dekker’s first shot was an air ball, and Nigel Hayes dropped his first pass. The Badgers missed 12 of their first 18 shots, falling behind, 21-17. After driving for a layup attempt midway through the first quarter, Winslow looked at Cook and mouthed, “They’re soft.”


Jones, Okafor and Winslow led the way this season, but Duke’s youthfulness rarely showed. Krzyzewski praised their hard work and good-naturedness. When Rasheed Sulaimon, a talented junior, was dismissed from the program in late January, it seemed to bring the team closer together.


That was never a problem with Wisconsin. The team had friendships furnished by video game rivalries that lasted for years. When the starters gathered for a news conference Sunday, ahead of the biggest game of their lives, their feet dangled off the dais, and they whispered to one another like schoolchildren.


“The problem with these guys is that they’re too tense,” Ryan deadpanned. “Can’t you tell?”


Both coaches were going for their fifth national title, although Ryan earned four of his with Division-III Wisconsin-Platteville, between 1991 and 1999. After he won his last one, Ryan’s father, Butch, sneaked onto the court and held a sign up behind the team picture: “Bring on Duke,” it read.


Butch Ryan died in August 2013. For years, he and his son annually attended the Final Four, so North Carolina Coach Roy Williams left seat No. 13 in Section 140, Row A, open for Butch on Monday.


After the teams went into halftime tied, Bronson Koenig scored 9 of the Badgers’ first 15 points in the second half. Wisconsin built its lead to 48-39 with 13:26 remaining.


“Anybody that’s been around basketball knows that 10, 15, 9, 8, 13 minutes to go, that’s forever,” Ryan said. “Teams make runs.”


Indeed, Duke’s biggest run was yet to come. It was ignited by Allen, who finished with 16 points, and fueled by Winslow (11 points) and Okafor, whose putback with about two minutes remaining gave Duke a 5-point lead.


But the main catalyst was Jones, who scored 10 of his 23 points in the final seven minutes, while Wisconsin scored only 9. Jones’s 3-pointer from the top of the key with 1 minute 23 seconds remaining proved to be the clinching shot.


“It’s hard to put it into words,” Jones said. “This is just such a special group.”


As the Duke players gathered on the court stage, after the confetti had come down, and the nets, too, Krzyzewski had one final piece of coaching for his young team. “Be reverent,” he said, turning his eyes toward the video board for the playing of the song “One Shining Moment.”


“They’ve all been different,” Krzyzewski said of his fifth national title. “The ability to adapt is key in everything. I think I’ve adapted well.”



A version of this article appears in print on April 7, 2015, on page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: Youth Serves Duke Well.






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Duke Defeats Wisconsin to Win NCAA Men's Basketball Championship - New York Times
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