PITTSBURGH—It's impossible to escape the pull of March Madness, especially for the players involved, so the Blue Devils settled in at their hotel just like fans across the country to watch the most stunning upset in NCAA tournament history unfold Friday night.
Unlike casual observers, they knew first-hand what it was like to play against Virginia's vaunted pack-line defense, the best in the nation for much of the season. The only visiting team to walk out of Cameron Indoor Stadium with a win this year earned its No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament, an honor that made the Cavaliers' 74-54 collapse against No. 16 seed UMBC all the more historic.
In the locker room after Duke's second-round blowout win against Rhode Island Saturday, freshman Trevon Duval said the Blue Devils used the upset as motivation to stay out of the carnage themselves.
"We’ve seen other teams take L’s yesterday, and we didn’t want that to be us," Duval said. "I still can’t believe that happened. I know everybody’s bracket is messed up, but it happened. It’s March."
Duke has had its share of March disappointment this decade. It lost to 15th-seeded Lehigh in 2012 and 14th-seeded Mercer in 2014, before falling to No. 7 seed South Carolina last season, a defeat that remains fresh on the minds of the returning Blue Devils.
"It definitely just reinforced how painful last year was, looking at those guys, a really talented team that had an unfortunate loss in the tournament," sophomore big man Javin DeLaurier said. "We just told our young guys, ‘Don’t let that be us.’ Because we know how that feels, how much it hurts."
Head coach Mike Krzyzewski added his perspective from being on the sideline for Duke's two first-round losses earlier this decade.
"We all understand that when we go into that arena, some great things can happen. But also, some really difficult things can happen," Krzyzewski said. "We've lost to teams that were deserving of winning. Like UMBC was deserving of winning, just like when we lost, C.J. McCollum was pretty good and Lehigh deserved to win. Mercer was really good and they deserved to win."
But none of the Blue Devils' March disappointments approached the scope of what happened in Charlotte Friday night. It was the first time a No. 16 seed ever beat a No. 1 seed, and the game wasn't even close. After Virginia took a 31-2 record into the NCAA tournament, won the ACC's regular-season crown by four games—holding Duke to 63 points in a road victory in the process—and rolled through the conference tournament, the Cavaliers allowed 53 points in a single half to the Retrievers as their defense melted down the stretch.
They were also playing without their most athletic threat in freshman wing De'Andre Hunter, the ACC's Sixth Man of the Year who swung the game against the Blue Devils in the second half. Virginia announced just days before the NCAA tournament that he would miss the rest of the season with a fractured wrist.
"They've been so damn good. They've been the best team in the country. And then they have an injury, and then you don't have much time to prepare," Krzyzewski said. "Tony [Bennett] did such a great job after the game in expressing his feelings, and really the feelings of what you should feel as a coach.... I just thought he handled it so well, and what a great example for all coaches to not just handle victory well, but to handle defeat, because you're going to experience both."
With the No. 1 overall seed out of the picture, Duke is now the second-highest favorite to win the national title, behind Villanova, and it looked impressive in two comfortable wins to advance to the Sweet 16. But there are no guarantees the Blue Devils will carry that level of play into next week—Virginia looked invincible for much of the season, too.
"That just put it in perspective that you cannot take anybody for granted in this tournament," freshman big man Wendell Carter Jr. said. "It’s called March Madness for a reason, and you have to just go out there and play as hard as you can for 40 minutes."
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