For just over 30 minutes, Louisville was poised to hand Duke an absolutely humbling road loss. What happened next will go down as one of the most dramatic comebacks in sports history.
It didn’t start well for Duke, but it didn’t end well for Louisville.
With 9:13 left to go in the game, the Cardinals had built a 59-36 lead on Duke. Zion Williamson was checking back into the game with four fouls, and even ESPN’s broadcasting crew declared that the game was over.
That didn’t matter to the Blue Devils, who outscored Louisville 35-10 the rest of the way to rally for an absolutely stunning 71-69 victory.
Duke used a combination of hot shooting (10-of-17 from the floor over that stretch) and dominant defense (Louisville was just 2-of-10 over that same stretch and committed 13 second-half turnovers) to steal a game they had absolutely no business winning for the first 30 minutes.
The Blue Devils’ second-half comeback, when they overcame a 23-point deficit, was the largest in Mike Krzyzewski’s career, beating a 20-point second half comeback against NC State in the 2011-2012 season. The largest second-half comeback in Duke history was 31 points against Tulane back in the 1950-1951 season.
For some more historical context, this comeback effort from Duke was the largest second half deficit overcome by a team with less than 10 minutes to go in NCAA basketball history (hat tip to the NCAA for the historical data) without overtime.
The largest second half comeback with under 10 minutes left in the second half was VCU’s win over South Florida on Feb. 20, 1993, when the Rams stormed back from 26 down with 9:58 to go to win in overtime.
This comeback was an incredibly gutty performance from Duke and would have been historic even if it came against a cupcake school out of conference. The fact that the Blue Devils pulled off this comeback at an ACC rival in Louisville, with the Duke starting lineup featuring four freshmen, is simply remarkable.
If you add that performance to what the Blue Devils have already done this season, they have to be considered the front-runners to win the national championship, despite Tennessee actually being the No. 1 team for the last month.
Winning a game like that, especially with their best player (Williamson) playing the final nine minutes with four fouls, shows the kind of guts that champions are made of.
Duke may not have won a championship tonight, but they pulled off one of the biggest comebacks in NCAA history. They also put the college basketball world on notice that they are the number one threat on the board to claim the national title in March.