'Surreal' shot ends epic end-of-game sequence for Blue Devils

Six seconds, five dribbles, three defenders and one shot. That’s all it took for number three to get the Blue Devils past No. 7 Virginia for the 17th straight time at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

What a 69th birthday for Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski.

“If he were to tell you what he wanted for his birthday, he would have said a win,” said sophomore Grayson Allen, whose game-winner sent the Blue Devil bench streaming onto the court with a 63-62 victory. “It feels good to give him that.”

In a grueling back-and-forth game full of momentum swings, it was only fitting that the victor between these two traditional ACC powerhouses be decided by a virtual—and literal—toss-up in the final 30 seconds.

Allen’s buzzer-beater—the product of his attack-the-rim-at-all-costs mentality—nearly blew the roof off of Cameron Indoor Stadium, and helped the sophomore check an item off of every basketball player’s bucket list.

“All the time out in my driveway, I would just count down in my head. It’s really surreal for me, [Duke] being my dream school,” Allen said. “A moment like that is something you dream of. You do it a hundred times over when you’re a little kid.”

Allen was clearly Duke’s hero Saturday. But up until his shot hit glass and dropped through the rim, he was trying to atone for two misses that nearly cost the Blue Devils a win.

Allen pulled down the defensive rebound with 27 seconds left after Virginia’s leading scorer, Malcolm Brogdon, missed a pull-up jumper for a one-point lead. Cavalier point guard London Perrantes wrapped up Allen as quickly as he could to stop the clock and send him to the line. The Jacksonville, Fla., native had shot 7-of-9 from the charity stripe prior to his trip to the line with 27 seconds left and entered Saturday sixth in the ACC at 86.1 percent.

If the Blue Devils could have picked anyone on the floor to send to the free-throw line in a late-game situation to turn a one-point lead into a 64-61 edge, they would have chosen Allen.

But Allen—who logged all 40 minutes Saturday—missed the first one. Virginia head coach Tony Bennett called a timeout to draw up a play and give Allen a little more time to contemplate the critical importance of his next shot.

The sophomore toed the line again, went through his routine and released the ball—and missed again.

“As soon as I missed those two free throws, my mind immediately went to getting a stop,” Allen said. “I was more thinking about ‘You need to get the ball back and make up for what you did.’”

Anthony Gill secured the rebound and the Cavaliers took a timeout to draw up what seemed likely to be their do-or-die plan. After running some time off the clock, Marial Shayok whipped a pass down low to a cutting Brogdon. The Atlanta native collected the pass as he crossed underneath the basket, adeptly navigated around multiple Blue Devil defenders and leaned backward in one fluid motion to flip in a reverse layup, giving Virginia a one-point lead with 10 seconds remaining.

But any team in the ACC knows better than to get comfortable with a lead until after the final buzzer sounds—especially the Cavaliers, who stormed back from a 10-point in 90 seconds deficit to stun Wake Forest on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer off glass Jan. 26. Duke raced the ball back up court. Krzyzewski called a timeout with six seconds remaining, knowing full well that he had some not-so-secret weapons at his disposal.

“I knew we could get Grayson or Brandon [Ingram] the ball, but I wasn’t sure that they would have been able to do that in the flow of the game,” Krzyzewski said. “Then we went to Grayson.”

Allen inbounded the ball to captain Marshall Plumlee, who handed the ball back to Allen, leaving him with two defenders and barely five seconds to work a miracle. He maneuvered his way into the paint and leapt into the air. There was plenty of contact, but no whistle came.

In a last-ditch effort, Allen tossed up a runner that glanced off the glass and fell through the net. Seconds later, he was at the bottom of a pile of Blue Devils in front of the Duke bench.

“We have guys one through five who are all capable of scoring and want to take the last shot, but I don’t think there’s anyone in the world I trust more than Grayson with the ball,” Plumlee said. “I couldn’t be more proud of him as a friend and as a teammate. This is a memorable moment and he did a great thing for our program tonight.”