HOUSTON — Just moments before running out onto the court for their Elite 8 matchup, the Blue Devils surrounded Nolan Smith in a circle, arms intertwined.
The junior screamed from the center with a grin on his face. On a team that Smith and seniors Lance Thomas and Jon Scheyer said has the best chemistry of any team they have ever played on, Smith is the vocal leader and has the most outgoing personality.
Before the season, he had told fans to look out for “the new Nolan Smith.” On Saturday night, that identity was fully exposed.
“He played great,” junior forward Kyle Singler said. “Offensively, he was just great, and he came up with some big plays. He was creating a lot of problems for their defense and they weren’t able to stop him.”
In the most important game of his career—with a trip to the Final Four up for grabs—the junior shattered his former career high of 24 points en route to a 29-point outburst. He hit 9-of-17 shots, including 4-for-6 from deep, and made 7-of-8 from the charity stripe en route to earning Most Outstanding Player honors for the South Regional.
Smith is having fun, and he’s not ready for it to end quite yet. Sitting in the locker room after the victory, Smith said he wouldn’t be taking his Final Four hat off until he got back to Durham.
“You can’t get tired of this,” Smith said. “When you feel this great, you want to keep doing it…. We love playing with each other, we have so much fun on and off the court with one another and that really is what drives us.”
Smith was forced to lead the Blue Devils on the offensive end on a night when Singler struggled to score. Singler missed all 10 of his field goal attempts and had four turnovers in 34 minutes of play. All five of his points came from the free throw line.
“It would have been nice if I would have made some easy buckets, but I just wasn’t able to get anything going,” Singler said. “But luckily, Nolan was terrific and Jon as well.”
“We all pick up each other,” Smith said. “If one of us isn’t scoring the ball like we know they can, Jon and myself try to pick up what they’re not doing. Kyle really did a great job defensively on [LaceDarius] Dunn, you know, chasing him around, and that wore him out a little bit.”
With 4:20 left, Smith hit a crucial 3-pointer off Singler’s pass to give Duke a 60-59 lead. Less than a minute later, he headed to the line after getting fouled by Baylor’s Tweety Carter and made the first of two free throws to tie the game at 61. After missing the second shot, Thomas grabbed the board and directed the ball to Smith, who buried a shot from beyond the arc that gave the Blue Devils three points and a lead that they never gave up.
“[Smith] was right in front of me, so as soon as he got it, I said, ‘Shoot it!’” head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “You’ve got to take advantage of the moment instead of taking it back out and setting up. We just said, ‘Shoot it.’ He shot it, and that’s why he acknowledged me right after with a big smile, so that was a cool thing.”
Singler wasn’t the only player who struggled against the Bears. Senior center Brian Zoubek found himself in foul trouble throughout the game, which limited him to 19 minutes of play before fouling out. By the time the senior headed to the bench with 2:18 left, Zoubek had collected nine boards, but more tellingly, Smith already had 27 of his points and had secured the Blue Devils a five-point lead.
“He’s a unique player on our team,” Zoubek said of Smith. “He [did] an unbelievable job of penetrating that zone tonight. [He was] getting little floaters and little shots, just giving us huge buckets when we couldn’t buy one. He really kept us in the game at some points.”
A year ago, Smith wasn’t even in the starting lineup during the NCAA Tournament. A season later, the new Nolan Smith is one of the Blue Devils’ stars as the team moves on to Indianapolis.
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