ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Trajan Langdon's career didn't deserve to end this way.
In his last game in a Duke uniform, the senior captain kept his team close time after time by knocking down one big shot after another.
For a player who might have been the best shooter in school history, the final six seconds just didn't end the way they were supposed to.
The Blue Devils got the ball in their leader's hands. One of the all-time great moments of drama in tournament history was all set up.
Though the buzzer sounded harmlessly instead, that didn't mean the Blue Devils had any regrets about who had the ball at the end.
"Absolutely. Positively. Absolutely," Mike Krzyzewski said. "I want Trajan Langdon to take that shot. Win or lose with Trajan Langdon. I will walk down any road with Trajan Langdon, and I'm proud of Trajan Langdon."
For the rest of the game, Langdon was Duke's only consistent scorer. When Connecticut rallied from an early 9-2 deficit and built a 17-13 lead, Langdon responded with a three.
When the Huskies led 36-32 just before the half, Langdon hit a three out top followed by a four-point play over Ricky Moore to give Duke the halftime advantage.
At the start of the second half, he scored five points as the Blue Devils opened a brief five-point edge. And finally, down 73-69 with 1:43 to go and Duke's title hopes fading, Langdon buried another long-distance bomb from 22 feet.
"He tried his best and did his best," Will Avery said. "Unfortunately, it just didn't work out at the end. I'm still real proud of him."
A debate will rage on for years to come as to whether or not Duke should have called a timeout, or looked for Elton Brand, or put the ball in Avery's hands. Krzyzewski, for one, won't regret it.
"It's a set we've run a number of times," he said. "And most of the time it's successful. Tonight it wasn't. I'm fine with that. The ball was in our best player's hands with an opportunity to win the game. And it's the way it should be."
"That's the way the game goes," Langdon added. "But that's not the game; there's millions of plays in that game that determine the outcome. So I'm not going to hang my head on that play."
Langdon became just the sixth player in championship game history to hit at least five three-pointers in a game. It's a fitting legacy for Langdon, who made this March far more memorable than the past two.
Up until the end last night, he carried the team on his shoulders. The ending just didn't happen for Trajan Langdon.
"Obviously I think we've had an unbelievable year," he said. "By far it's the best team that I've been on. I've loved playing with the guys. It's disappointing obviously because you want to win. We got to this point, you want to pull it out. But it's not going to put a damper on what kind of year we had.
"We had an unbelievable year and I'm not going to allow one game to make it a disappointing year."
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