CHARLOTTE -- The unofficial motto of the NCAA Tournament is `survive and advance.' The men's basketball team did just that Saturday night against Florida. Barely.
The Blue Devils fell behind by 13 points early in the second half but rallied to beat the upset-minded Gators 70-65 in a national semifinal game before 23, 674 at the Charlotte Coliseum.
Duke (28-5) will play Arkansas (30-3), 91-82 winners over Arizona in the other semifinal, at 9:22 p.m. tonight for its third NCAA title in four years.
Senior Grant Hill had a monumental performance with 25 points, and classmates Marty Clark and Antonio Lang made crucial plays in the final minutes to preserve the win over the East Regional champions.
"It was just an awfully good college basketball game," said Florida head coach Lon Kruger. "Duke made some good plays late in the game. The better team won the game."
A Duke appearance in Monday night's final seemed an unlikely prospect for much of the game.
Although the Blue Devils were chipping into the Gator lead for most of the second half, the decisive stretch of the game began after the final television timeout with 3:24 remaining and Duke leading 62-60.
With a chance to extend its tenuous lead, Duke turned the ball over when freshman Jeff Capel threw the ball away to UF's Craig Brown. Brown then stroked a three-pointer in transition to put the Gators up by one point.
But Capel, undaunted by the mistake in his first Final Four game, hit a three-pointer of his own to give Duke a lead it wouldn't lose. The coaching staff guessed that Florida might trap Hill off of Capel, who had been 2-of-9 from the floor to that point, and instructed Hill to find Capel should that happen. When the trap occurred, Capel forgot about the turnover and swished the crucial shot.
"All year long our team has gone on to the next play well [after making a mistake,]" said Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Capel's recovery was not the last example of that mentality Saturday.
One Hill free throw and an Andrew DeClercq tip-in later, the lead was just 66-65. Duke's Clark then missed a three-pointer that would have given the Blue Devils a four-point lead with 90 seconds to play. But just seconds later, Clark made a critical steal--a strip of Florida guard Dan Cross--that prevented the Gators from getting a shot off to take the lead.
"I left my man, and Cross came towards the middle," Clark said. "Luckily for me, I got a piece of the ball."
Clark's steal gave Duke a chance to put the pressure on Florida with a basket. The Blue Devils ran down the shot clock before getting the ball to Cherokee Parks for a turnaround jumper that rimmed out. But Parks didn't quit on the play and followed up with an offensive rebound and a layup to put Duke ahead 68-65 with 15 seconds left.
There was one more play to be made. Lang, who played just 28 minutes in a foul-plagued performance, made up for his absence by taking a charge on Cross as he raced up the court.
"The call could have gone either way," Cross said. "I respect the referee for making the call. I didn't think it was a charge, but the ref called it."
The turnover gave Duke the ball, and the Blue Devils played keep-away from the chasing Gators before Clark found Lang for a dunk with two seconds left.
"In the second half, the name of the game was not to quit," Clark said.
For Duke, the name of the game was also the play of the three seniors, who now have a 18-1 record in NCAA Tournament play and will be going for a third national chammpionship tonight.
Grant Hill, of course, was brilliant and shouldered the burden of getting the struggling Duke offense in gear. Along with Parks, Hill played 40 minutes and exerted himself not only by taking the crucial shots, but also in guarding the dangerous Brown.
Brown had scored nine points in three possessions in UF's East Regional final win over Boston College last week. Against Duke, he scored eight points after averaging 15 this year.
"I think Hill did an excellent job on Brown," Kruger said. "Craig's a guy who works hard away from the ball, and Hill did a great job recovering if he was a step behind."
Lang and Clark also stepped forward to extend their college careers one more game. Despite being out much of the game in foul trouble, Lang was second on the team with 12 points and was 6-of-6 from the free throw line, not to mention the crucial charge he took on Cross.
Clark was 2-of-3 from three-point range after not scoring in the Marquette and Purdue games last week and had the important strip of Cross.
"It's no coincidence the guys making the big plays were seniors," sophomore Chris Collins said.
For a while against Florida, it looked like the Blue Devils had picked up right where they left off the last time they played in Charlotte. That was a dismal loss to Virginia at the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament three weeks ago.
For most of the first half and the opening minutes of the second, ~Duke was ineffective on offense and, defensively, was letting the quick Florida backcourt of Brown, Cross and Jason Anderson penetrate to the basket and draw fouls. The Gators, short on Final Four experience but long on determination, were taking it to the Blue Devils like no other team had so far in the NCAAs.
"Florida looked like they had been to all the Final Fours instead of us," Grant Hill said.
"They were so much quicker than I thought they were," Krzyzewski said. "Quick and poised. They were much more poised than we were in the first half. We were knocked back by their quickness and good defense.
"They have the best backcourt that we played against this year."
The net result of Duke's uncharacteristic play was a 39-32 halftime deficit. The Blue Devils had taken several four-point leads -- the last at 29-25 after a three-pointer by Clark -- but Florida quickly closed the gap with their balanced, quick offensive style.
Just when it looked as if Duke had found an offensive rhythm by scoring on four of five possessions leading up to Clark's three-pointer, Florida went on a 14-3 run in the final 6:46 to end the half. Four Gators scored during the run, making it difficult for the Duke defense to key on a particular player.
When Duke went to the locker room, it faced the prospect of doing something only two teams had ever done in the Final Four -- come back from a seven-point halftime deficit.
After three minutes of the second half, that seven-point hole looked awfully good.
Up to that point in the NCAA Tournament, normal protocol had called for the Blue Devils to begin the second half with a decisive run and make the other team play catch-up. Purdue and Marquette had been unable to deal with it in the Southeast Regionals, but Florida made sure it did not face that problem.
The Gators came out smoking. Wide-body Dametri Hill hit a 10-footer and Brown an 18-footer, making the score 43-32, before Krzyzewski had seen enough and called a timeout.
"We thought we had them on the ropes," Brown said. "But we also felt there was a lot of basketball left to play. We felt good, but we knew we had to continue to do what we had been doing."
"Coach called the timeout to challenge us, to try to get us to regroup," Grant Hill said. "We started to get some confidence back and hit some shots after that."
Coming out of the timeout, DeClercq nailed a 17-footer to give the Gators an imposing 13-point lead before Hill began to single-handedly rally Duke.
Hill came down the court and calmy hit the biggest shot of the game, a three-pointer from the left corner which gave the Blue Devils some fire.
"Hill's three came exactly when they had to have the three," Kruger said. "That's why they're Duke."
Duke scored on its next four possessions, the last of which was another trey by Hill to close the gap to 49-44, but Florida was not going to be overcome that easily.
The Gators bumped the lead back to six points on a Brown three-pointer with 11 minutes remaining before the Blue Devils made their decisive run.
NOTES: The victory over Florida was Duke's 11th in the Final Four all-time, tying the Blue Devils for third place with Indiana and North Carolina behind UCLA and Kentucky (I WOULD LIKE TO KILL THIS NOTE)...Grant Hill moved into ninth place on Duke's all-time scoring list Saturday and now has 1,912 points...Duke is 6-1 this season when trailing at halftime.
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