NEWARK, N.J. — Duke freshman Cooper Flagg swooped across the paint and swatted an Alabama player’s shot completely off the court.
The basketball landed in the stands. Flagg and the rest of Blue Devils?
They’re headed to the Final Four.
Duke’s long, tall, NBA-ready standouts smothered the Crimson Tide’s nation-leading offense and even papered over Flagg’s rough shooting night to lift the Blue Devils to the program’s 18th Final Four with an 85-65 victory in the NCAA tournament’s East Region final Saturday night.
Flagg made only six of his 16 shots, including a brick that got stuck in the flange of the rim, but the All-America first-team selection still finished with 16 points. Kon Knueppel, another potential lottery pick for the NBA draft, led the top-seeded Blue Devils with 21 points, and Tyrese Proctor — who came to the postgame news conference with the freshly cut net hanging from his neck — finished with 17.
But the most important stat: Second-seeded Alabama, two nights after a Sweet 16 win in which it set the NCAA tourney record for most 3-pointers in a single game, failed to crack 70 points for only the second time this season.
The Tide’s 35.4% shooting from the floor was their worst all season, and their 25% (8-for-32) showing behind the arc matched their fourth-worst showing of 2024-25.
“To hold them to 65 points is incredible,” said Duke coach Jon Scheyer, whose team adds the East Region championship to its Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season and tournament titles while continuing the quest for the program’s sixth NCAA crown. “We watched them play the other night. They scored 113 and made 25 3s. The biggest thing for us was not taking the bait of getting so spread out.”
Mark Sears, who came one short of a tournament record with 10 3s in that victory against sixth-seeded BYU, finished with one this time. His six points were his fewest since he got shut out in limited playing time in a win over LSU in January.
“They’ve got length all over the place, just look at their starting lineup,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said when asked to explain his team’s struggles.
The top-seeded Blue Devils (35-3) have won 15 straight games and are headed to San Antonio for next weekend’s Final Four. Their national semifinal will be against the winner of Sunday’s Midwest Regional final between No. 1 seed Houston and No. 2 Tennessee.
Their win erased any chance of an all-Southeastern Conference show at the Final Four, but with Florida winning the West Region final earlier, it kept alive the prospect of all four top seeds playing in the national semifinals for only the second time. The only other men’s Final Four to feature all No. 1 seeds was in 2008 when Kansas, Memphis, UCLA and North Carolina made it.
Khaman Maluach — whose reach while standing is 9-foot-8 — scored 14 points on 6-of-7 shooting, had two blocks and altered a few more Alabama shots.
Duke shot 53.6% despite its best player’s rough night, though Flagg was hardly bad overall. He had nine rebounds, three assists and the one mega-block that sent Mouhammed Dioubate’s floater flying over press row.
But in a game in which both teams were focused on taking away the other’s best player, it was Duke that did it more effectively, switching off on Sears, locking down the perimeter and never letting him find breathing room.
The fifth-year senior’s first bucket of any kind came nearly 18 minutes into the game, and the shot was a 16-footer from the elbow — the exact kind of mid-range shot Oats’ team of dunkers and 3-point specialists avoids.
Sears’ first 3 came with 16:19 left in the game. His final line: 2-for-12 from the floor, 1-for-5 from long range. He also had six assists.
“It was by committee,” Duke guard Sion James said. “We were switching a lot. We knew the biggest thing for him is showing him bodies, making sure whoever was guarding the ball is not on an island by himself.”
Labaron Philon led the second-seeded Crimson Tide (28-9) with 16 points. Not a single Alabama player made more shots than he missed, and the program’s chase for a second straight Final Four trip a year after its first came to a sudden stop.
Scheyer, who has his alma mater in the Final Four for the first time since his predecessor Mike Krzyzewski’s last season in 2022, has up to six NBA prospects on his roster.
The coach’s description of his group of freshmen, led by the 18-year-0ld Flagg, explains why they sometimes make it look easy: “Loose, confident, competitive and not fazed by this environment.”