Duke freshmen lead way to Final Four, struggle with rite of passage

HOUSTON – When the supreme moment came Sunday night – the stuff of basketball fantasy – Duke's program experienced a sheepish pause. Right at the bottom of the ladder, with scissors in hand, it became clear that there was one thing all these acclaimed freshmen had yet to learn.

Basketball nets. How exactly did you cut one down? Like, in technical terms. Was there etiquette? Who got the last cut? Who got the first? How much nylon should you take? And, really, who goes that high on a ladder with scissors?

Of all the moments that pushed Duke basketball into a wide-angle view after Sunday's 66-52 win over Gonzaga in the South Region final at NRG Stadium to advance to the Final Four, this might have been it. With Jahlil Okafor looking at Justise Winslow. And Winslow looking at Tyus Jones. And Grayson Allen just looking happy to be there. Four freshmen building blocks capable of navigating anything, but getting stymied by the NCAA basketball's greatest historical rite of passage. But who were they supposed to ask about this net thing? Duke's most seasoned player, senior Quinn Cook, arrived in 2011 – the season after the Blue Devils' last Final Four. That's when the realization hit home. For the players, this was a first for everybody.

You could put that moment in a frame and hang it, because it tells you everything you need to know about how special this Duke run has become. The Blue Devils are not deep. They are not overly experienced. And this definitely is not the 10-deep McDonald's All-American assembly line that we've come to expect. This team is so young and so good. But really – it's sooo young.

"We have eight guys. Four of them are freshmen," Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "It's the youngest team I've ever had. No one would ever say that because we're Duke. Or because it's me. But these guys – there are eight guys. There's not somebody hiding in the locker room that's going to come out and appear."

Krzyzewski then said it one more time in case you hadn't gotten the picture: "And four freshmen."

For accuracy's sake, it's three spectacular freshmen (Okafor, Winslow and Jones) who are virtual locks to be NBA first-round picks when they leave Duke. And the fourth, Allen, will get better and stronger and likely develop into one of those Blue Devils shooters who drives opponents crazy.

That said, Krzyzewski is getting at a valid point. After the ugly dismissal of Rasheed Sulaimon, two things happened for Duke.

First, the roster lost an experienced fallback. While Sulaimon had already begun to see his time and role whittled away, his departure eliminated the margin of error in an emergency. If Winslow went down with injury or hit a freshman wall or the Blue Devils lost anyone who could create off the dribble, there was no safety net.

Second, it put the three key freshmen – and Winslow in particular – into a situation where they all had to develop in multiple facets. They had to score. They had to carry. They had to lead. And when a team like Gonzaga rose up Sunday night and took a 38-34 lead – the only time Duke has trailed in the second half in this tournament – those freshmen had to wrestle back a more experienced team.

And so it went. A Winslow layup. An Okafor jumper. Some Jones free throws. Seventeen of the next 26 points came from the freshman trinity. By the time Gonzaga called timeout with 2:42 remaining, the Bulldogs trailed 60-51 and had lost all momentum. The game was over. A team that was accustomed to scoring in the 80s and 90s (and even hit 109 in one win this season) had been shut down. Granted, it wasn't just the freshmen. Cook was a defensive wizard and Matt Jones had his best game of the tournament. But the freshmen were, like always, the difference.

"Man, if you get down to Duke in that [final] four minutes, I don't think there's anybody better at finishing games," Gonzaga coach Mark Few said.

Not just on offense, but defense, too. Maligned as a defensive team, the Blue Devils have been superb in the tournament, at least partially from the tough play of Winslow, who has been attacking teams on both ends of the court. All of which lends to that picture that Krzyzewski keeps bringing up: eight guys, four freshmen – if they couldn't get better as they went along, none of this happens.

So Krzyzewski goes to his 12th Final Four, tying all-time great John Wooden – a fitting accomplishment that even Few couldn't deny this weekend, when he said he already considers Krzyzewski to be inhabiting the same peak as the UCLA icon. Surely you could argue Krzyzewski had already etched himself onto the Mount Rushmore of coaches, regardless of a win or loss Sunday.

But the fact remains, Krzyzewski has tied Wooden, and done it with a team far younger and a depth chart far shallower than any Wooden ever fielded. Krzyzewski did it by – of all things – learning in his 39th year as a head coach. He lost half a team and then assimilated three freshmen into starring roles. He got them to change their defensive stripes late in the year. And he convinced them that this was actually expected – that this is what the program does.

"A teacher should learn with every new year that he or she has an opportunity to teach," Krzyzewski said Sunday.

That sounded so much like a Woodenism that it had to be looked up, just to make sure he wasn't salting out some old-school knowledge. But it wasn't. That was all Krzyzewski. Now he marches on, stepping onto a new historical basketball plain in the 68th year of his life. With a lower yield of All-Americans, but a higher ceiling for growth. Still teaching. And apparently still learning.

Look at that picture. For the first time in a long time, everything is new again. Even the ladder, the scissors, and the youthful shrug of the kids that are cutting their way into history for the first time.