GREENSBORO - The ball soared through the air.
With Duke up 72-69, Texas was fighting for its NCAA Tournament life, but two of its shots by guard A.J. Abrams and forward Damion James rimmed out. Jon Scheyer poked the ball free from James' grasp, and, careening out of bounds, the junior tri-captain hurled it up and back, up beyond the range of the television cameras, back toward the Blue Devils' basket... up, up and up.
Scheyer said he wasn't really thinking when he dove into the Texas bench. He knew that precious seconds were ticking off the clock, and he just wanted to get it away from the Longhorns' basket. He wasn't thinking when he flung the ball into the air with his left hand. His instincts took over, and he was trying to give one of his guys the chance to make a play.
Elliot Williams saw the ball fly into the air and took off after it immediately, knowing that Duke had to come up with the ball. Gary Johnson, who Williams saw to his right out of the corner of his eye, shoved Williams in the scramble, sending the freshman to the line to shoot two.
After the game, as Krzyzewski listed the key plays his Blue Devils had made in the last minute, he said the Scheyer-Williams sequence would go down as one of the great plays for this team.
"Those are plays that you think of Magic Johnson making, and people just really smart making," Krzyzewski said, turning to Scheyer and grinning.
It was only one of many Duke made Saturday night. The Blue Devils were tested to the limit, and in the last 1:40, Duke responded, making all the necessary, clutch plays. Sophomore Kyle Singler made plays, freshman Elliot Williams made plays and Scheyer made one long, high-arcing play that took a good five or six seconds off of a 17-second game clock. They were plays the Blue Devils might not have made last year, but this year, Duke delivered.
And as a result, the No. 2 seed Blue Devils are headed to Boston for their first Sweet 16 appearance since 2006.
At the final buzzer, their reaction said it all. Krzyzewski, typically stoic, beamed at Singler and Scheyer, and Gerald Henderson squeezed the ball in his hands, a wide smile plastered across his face as he looked down at it almost disbelievingly.
All year long, whispers have suggested that Duke was the same team that couldn't make it deep into March, even as it rose to No. 1 in the country in January. Without hearing it from the media, the Blue Devils have more than enough fuel to motivate themselves this Tournament.
"[I remember] just coming up short [last year], not taking it as far as we thought our team could go," Henderson said. "Last year, we had a good team. We're a lot better this year, but we had a good team last year.... Coming up short-that's what kind of sits with you."
Three years of criticism couldn't have been easy to take, and Duke is on a mission to prove everyone wrong.
We're not the same team-and here's proof, they said Saturday.
"This isn't last year. Who knows what would have happened [last year]?" Scheyer said. "The biggest difference is we're together, and I think that helps in tough situations."
When Texas knotted the game at 67 with 1:40 remaining, the Blue Devils put the ball in the hands of Henderson and told him to go get a basket. He missed, but Singler saved him and tipped it in, coming out of nowhere in spectacular fashion.
When Nolan Smith was fouled with 47 seconds showing on the clock, the sophomore stepped calmly to the line and sank his free throws to break the tie yet again.
When Singler fouled out, joining fellow 6-foot-8 forward Lance Thomas on the bench, Duke still had the resilience to make perhaps the most important play: a rebound after Williams' missed free throw with 11.5 seconds left. The ever-steady Dave McClure was mobbed by two Longhorns but still managed to get his hands on the ball and tip it out to Henderson.
Rebound, Duke. Say hello to the Sweet 16.
"[The last minute] was crazy, but we've been there a lot this year, especially these last couple weeks," McClure said. "The ACC Tournament, to get through the first round, we had to hold on for a last-second shot. We've had so many games down to crunch time that, you never really get used to it, but you know what you have to do."
Against Texas, the Blue Devils fought to make those plays at the end of the game, and this year, they had the knowledge of how to do it-something that might have been missing in the last two years.
"We have more fight," Smith said. "This year's team is on a mission.... After last year, West Virginia knocked us back with their rebounding and we never hit them back. Today, we decided to fight.
"It means a lot to us to get to the Sweet 16. We're proud of our effort, and we're going to keep fighting."
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