PORTLAND, Ore.—Less than two weeks after the Champions Classic, Duke will share a building with three top-10 teams once again on Championship Sunday at the PK80 Invitational.
The top-ranked Blue Devils will face No. 7 Florida at the Moda Center Sunday night in the championship of the Motion bracket. The game will likely tip off after 11 p.m. on the East Coast, about 30 minutes after the conclusion of No. 4 Michigan State’s matchup with No. 9 North Carolina to decide the Victory bracket.
“No one in college basketball has proved their ranking yet, so the biggest part for us is we need to prove that we can be the best team,” Duke senior Grayson Allen said after Friday’s overtime win against Texas. “Even though there’s a No. 1 by the name, it really doesn’t mean anything six, seven games into the season because we haven’t done anything. There’s a lot of teams like that out there.”
The Blue Devils made it to Sunday night by way of a dramatic comeback from 16 points down against Texas, but their win was not even the most thrilling game of the day. That honor went to the nightcap between the Gators and No. 17 Gonzaga, a 111-105 double-overtime dogfight which ultimately saw Florida come away victorious.
The Gators’ lightning-fast guards traded punches with the Bulldogs’ formidable frontcourt, as junior KeVaughn Allen made the game-tying layup in the final minute of regulation and senior Chris Chiozza took the ball coast to coast for a go-ahead 3-point play with eight seconds left in the first overtime. Chiozza is expected to play despite battling a number of early-season injuries and taking a hard fall late in Friday's game.
Virginia Tech transfer Jalen Hudson put Florida in front for good with a triple in double overtime. All three Gator guards scored at least 23 points, led by Hudson with 35, and Florida shot 17-of-36 from deep a day after knocking down a blistering 15-of-22 3-pointers and scoring 108 points against Stanford.
The Gators will likely have a hard time stopping Duke big men Marvin Bagley III and Wendell Carter Jr. in the paint, but they withstood 39 points and 12 rebounds from Johnathan Williams Friday and have shown the ability to outscore teams even when they have mismatches on defense.
Duke’s zone defense that worked well in a win two weeks ago against the Spartans probably would not be as effective against one of the top shooting teams in the nation. Friday, the Blue Devils showed faith in their man-to-man defense during the comeback against Texas after the Longhorns exposed holes in the 2-3 zone to build their big lead.
“We don’t play zone because we can’t stop somebody. We play zone because we think we can be good at it,” Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “We weren’t good at anything in the first half, so we said look, we’re going to go back to our man-to-man defense and our normal coverage on the ball screen. It put them in more of a familiar spot.”
Florida has just one healthy player taller than 6-foot-9, and 6-foot-11 sophomore reserve Gorjok Gak may be called on to play a bigger role to challenge Bagley, Carter, Marques Bolden and Javin DeLaurier.
But the Gators could also stick to their strengths, with a starting lineup of five players who can all step out to the 3-point line. Egor Koulechov and 6-foot-8 forward Keith Stone round out the starting lineup, and Koulechov led the team with 26 points on a perfect 5-of-5 shooting from 3-point range against Stanford, before going cold against the Bulldogs.
“They were definitely bigger than us, definitely had bigger guys, but the way we look at it is, they have to guard us too,” Hudson said after the Gonzaga game. “We have a lot of guys that can make plays and shoot the ball.”
Florida lost to Duke last December 84-74 in New York, but with a pair of transfers added to its lineup in Koulechov and Hudson and a returning core of Allen and Chiozza who led a run to the NCAA tournament Elite Eight in March, the Gators have the pieces to compete with the Blue Devils on a big stage.
Third-year head coach Mike White, a rising star in the coaching ranks whose father, Kevin, is Duke's vice president and director of athletics, also has another season of big-game experience under his belt.
“It felt like it did last March. I haven’t had a ton of experience in March playing in that tournament, but it felt like that,” White said Friday night. “Anytime you play a program like Gonzaga and the next team we’re going to play, [Duke], it’s going to feel a little bit different.”
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