GREENVILLE, S.C. — If Mike Krzyzewski’s final Duke team does not win the national title, college basketball fans will quickly identify the reason why. They will say this was a classic case of youth being wasted on the young.
Funny how it’s all worked out. Coach K is getting out of the game because he is 75 years old, and ready to embrace the normal lifestyle of a grandfather, and yet his Blue Devils are considered vulnerable because, you know, teenagers will be teenagers. Freshmen will be freshmen.
Kids will be kids.
“I think some things that we can exploit, just our maturity,” said Damari Milstead of Cal State Fullerton, the long-shot school facing Duke on Friday night. “Duke is a super, super talented group, but they’re inexperienced. … I think our maturity and poise and just our togetherness as a program and how long we’ve been together are some things we can really exploit.”
Exploit? Did an older, more mature 15th seed actually suggest for the record that its second-seeded opponent — the signature college basketball program in America — is just sitting there ready to be exposed?
Hey, Saint Peter’s just beat Kentucky, right?
Truth is, Milstead was saying only what a lot of people are thinking. Duke has no NCAA Tournament experience — outside of Krzyzewski’s previous 35 trips to The Dance, of course. So something has to change for the Blue Devils to win the whole thing. Namely, they have to grow old together and fast.
More than four months ago, I sat inside Madison Square Garden as Duke completely outplayed Kentucky, and looked very much like the nation’s best team. Nobody was talking much about the Blue Devils’ youth that night, or the night they beat Gonzaga for their seventh straight victory.
But they haven’t been the same since their two-week holiday-time COVID break, ultimately losing three home games to ACC teams with lesser ability (Miami, Virginia and North Carolina). The crushing Carolina loss was understandable, given that Duke’s players faced as much pressure to give Coach K his proper Cameron Indoor Stadium sendoff as any college basketball team has ever faced in a regular-season game.
And yet once they were liberated from Cameron, the Blue Devils still couldn’t win three straight games in Brooklyn. They were badly outplayed by a Virginia Tech team with a roster that, pound for pound, can’t touch Duke’s.
Freshmen Paolo Banchero and AJ Griffin are certain to be top-10 picks in June’s NBA draft. Classmate Trevor Keels and sophomore Mark Williams are also expected to go in the first round. Wendell Moore Jr. still has a shot to make it a first-round Fab Five.
Pairing that kind of firepower with arguably the greatest college basketball coach of all time should produce a lethal national championship threat. And yet a lot of people who care about such things didn’t think Duke even deserved a two-seed in this tournament. Those people have watched the Blue Devils enough to know that they haven’t inspired the kind of faith inspired by Krzyzewski’s five title teams.
So yes, something to change this weekend here in Greenville. For one, Duke has to start playing better defense, something that was a focal point during some spirited pre-tournament practices. “This week was more of reaffirming our good habits,” Krzyzewski said Thursday.
For two, Banchero needs to be ultra-aggressive 24/7, and avoid the 10- and 15-minute disappearing acts that popped up here and there in the regular season.
For three, Griffin, the former five-star prospect from Archbishop Stepinac in White Plains, also needs to attack the moment with a ferocity that defines the player he has long emulated — Jimmy Butler. At 6-foot-6 and 222 pounds, Griffin is a lights-out perimeter shooter with a 7-foot wingspan, bouncy athleticism, and a poise rarely found in an 18-year-old on the game’s biggest stage.
“He’s never nervous,” Krzyzewski has said of him.
Griffin overcame a preseason knee injury to more or less honor his advance billing, scoring 27 at North Carolina and clearing 20 in road victories over Wake Forest, Louisville and Syracuse, and then dropping 21 on Miami in the ACC Tournament semis. Griffin shot 46.7 percent from 3-point range for the year.
The negatives? Griffin has taken only 45 free throws in 34 games, and at times needs to find different ways to impact the game.
That’s OK. His high school coach, Pat Massaroni, still hears regularly from NBA teams interested in doing as much homework on Griffin as they can.
“I can see AJ being one of the best shooters we’ve seen in a long time in the NBA,” Massaroni said. “His game will continue to evolve. … I don’t think AJ fully understands yet just how good he can be.”
Griffin needs to understand that right now, along with Banchero and the rest of the Blue Devils. Duke watched what happened to Kentucky on Thursday night. It was just another reminder that March waits for nobody.