Record: 31-6, 13-3 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Lost in national semifinal
Final AP Ranking: 6
All-ACC Players: Chris Duhon (1st), JJ Redick (2nd), Shelden Williams (2nd), Luol Deng (3rd)
All-Americans: None
These Duke teams are starting to run together. But this edition was really good. They had balanced scoring with all five starters (JJ Redick, Luol Deng, Shelden Williams, Chris Duhon, and Daniel Ewing) averaging double figures. This was the sophomore version of Redick and Williams – good, but not as good as they would be later. Duhon was the point guard, the spiritual and defensive leader, and the energy guy (Jay Williams said of Duhon “it was like he drank a million Red Bulls”). Off the bench the Blue Devils featured sophomores Shavlik Randolph and Sean Dockery.
The Blue Devils were the nation’s best team according to kenpom. They did it on both ends, featuring the second-most efficient offense and third best defense. If they had a weakness, it was defensive rebounding. In fact, one of the themes of the Redick-Williams era Duke teams was their poor defensive rebounding. Williams himself was a great rebounder, but nobody else was. They never really found that second big man, and that would eventually come back to haunt them.
They stumbled early in a loss to Purdue, then proceeded to win 18 straight, ascending to the top of the AP poll. The ACC that year was absolutely brutal, with seven out of nine teams ranked in kenpom’s Top 30. Eventually the Blue Devils had to lose a few, and they did. But they won the regular season title by two full games and finished 25-4 and ranked fifth in the polls.
Duke had absolutely dominated the ACC Tournament in the previous five years or so. This time, it was someone else’s turn, and that someone was Gary Williams and Maryland. Led by tournament MVP John Gilchrist, the Terrapins defeated 15th-ranked Wake Forest, 17th-ranked NC State (overcoming a 19-point halftime deficit), and fifth-ranked Duke in consecutive games to bring home Williams’ first and only title.
Duke was the top seed in the Atlanta region. They survived two tough regional games against Illinois (essentially the same team that would reach the national championship game the following year) and Xavier. In the Final Four, it was a battle royal with the UConn Huskies. This game is remembered for Emeka Okafor going off in the second half as literally all of Duke’s big men – Williams, Randolph, and seldom-used Nick Horvath – fouled out after playing a total of 41 minutes among the three of them, prompting K to tell one of the officials, “You cheated us.” Incidentally, it’s also remembered as one of the worst “bad beats” of all time, as Duhon banked in a 3-pointer as time expired to flip the point spread.
We all know about one-and-done, but I had forgotten exactly when the NBA stopped taking high school players, which forced the one-and-done situation that we still live with today. The answer is 2006. Deng played before that rule was in place. As the second-ranked recruit (after Lebron James) in the high school class of 2003, he could have gone straight to the NBA from high school, but he chose to come to college, and then he chose to leave after a year. It’s hard not to play the what if game with Deng. Of course there are 100 players you could do that with, but Deng and Corey Maggette are different because they did it when it was rare and before the rule was in place. You have to think that one of those 2005-6 Redick/Williams teams that both had disappointing endings may have had a different outcome.