The Duke Blue Devils lost in the Final Four to the Houston Cougars in an absolutely heartbreaking fashion on Saturday night.
Despite holding a six-point lead with less than a minute to play, Duke couldn’t close out the win, with the Cougars riding a few big defensive stops, even bigger shots, and one somewhat questionable foul call to steal a spot in the championship.
After the game, Duke head coach Jon Scheyer, understandably, struggled to put the ending of the game into words.
“It’s hard to process still. I thought our guys did an incredible job the whole game. I thought we had some good looks. Didn’t finish,” Scheyer said. “You have to give Houston a ton of credit. It’s still, even with that, we had the lead with under a minute to go. I couldn’t be more proud. I’m not about to hang our head. This is part of it. You’ve got to handle the wins, and you’ve got to handle the losses too. In a moment like this, we were this close. We thought we were the best team. The best team tonight was Houston. Hats off to them.”
“It’s been a magical ride. We believed with everything we had that we were going to win a championship here.”
Through the first two weeks of the tournament, most of the college basketball world would have agreed—Duke looked like a championship team. Instead, Houston and Florida will compete on Monday for the right to be called champions.