Record: 35-4, 13-3 (1st place tie)
ACC Tournament: Won
NCAA Tournament: Won
Final AP Ranking: 1
All-ACC Players: Shane Battier (ACC POY), Jason Williams (1st), Nate James (3rd)
All-Americans: Shane Battier (National POY), Jason Williams (1st)
We’ve talked extensively about the 1998-2002 Duke run of greatness. All five of those teams are in the Top 50, but this one is the best. Actually, in my heart of hearts, I think the 1999 team was a little better, but I can’t justify ranking them ahead considering this team won the national championship.
After the incredible 1999 team, there were a lot of departures. Trajan Langdon graduated; Elton Brand, Will Avery, and Corey Maggette turned pro; and Chris Burgess transferred. The key returnees in 2000 were Battier, Chris Carrawell, and Nate James. To that group, they added four highly regarded freshmen in Jason Williams, Mike Dunleavy, Carlos Boozer, and Casey Sanders. The 2000 team wound up being better than expected. Carrawell, Battier, and James all made huge leaps forward, and Williams, Dunleavy, and Boozer were great.
Coming into 2001, expectations were sky-high. Carrawell was the only significant loss, and another highly-touted freshman in Chris Duhon was set to take his spot in the rotation.
The ACC was stacked as usual. Five of the ACC’s nine teams were ranked in the Top 10 at some point during the season. North Carolina, in Matt Doherty’s first year, returned the core (minus Ed Cota) of the 2000 Final Four team. Maryland was on the rise with the core group that would win the national championship the next year. Virginia and Wake Forest were both really good. And Georgia Tech was a solid team that went on to make the NCAA Tournament.
Duke came out hot, grabbing the #1 ranking when Arizona lost early. They swept a difficult early non-conference stretch with wins over Villanova, Texas, Temple, Illinois, Temple again, and Michigan. Their last nonconference test was a late December game in Oakland vs. #3 Stanford. The Cardinal pulled out a one-point victory in what seemed like a Final Four preview (Maryland would eventually mess that up by beating Stanford in the NCAA Tournament).
Duke responded by winning their next nine games, including a 42-point drubbing of #10 Virginia and a 23-point win over #9 Wake Forest. The last game of that streak was the 98-96 overtime “Miracle Minute” classic over Maryland at Cole Fieldhouse in which the Blue Devils came from ten points down with less than a minute to play to tie the game and win it in overtime. That ran the Blue Devils’ record to 19-1.
Meanwhile, down the road, North Carolina was putting together a run of their own. Coming into their first meeting with Duke, the Tar Heels had won 14 straight and were up to #4 in the polls. Both teams were undefeated in the ACC. The game was yet another Blue Blood classic as Carolina pulled out an 85-83 victory. After a Dunleavy three tied the game with 3.9 seconds left, Battier, trying to get a steal, was called for bumping into Brendan Haywood with 1.2 seconds left. The 49% foul shooter calmly stepped up and made both. Chris Duhon’s 50-foot heave at the buzzer was oh-so-close, but hit off the back iron. The Blue Devils were left to lament the 14 free throws they missed.
After a few easy wins, Duke dropped another tough road game to #12 Virginia – payback for the 42-point beatdown they suffered in the first meeting. The next-to-last game of the regular season was the rematch with Maryland. The Terrapins took another step forward in their coming of age by going into Cameron and taking an 11-point win. Carlos Boozer broke his foot in this game and would miss the next six as Casey Sanders stepped into the starting lineup.
As usual, the regular season closed with the rematch with Carolina. The Tar Heels had stumbled a bit with a mystifying loss at Clemson and a blowout at Virginia, and this game continued that trend. Without Boozer, the Blue Devils ran away with a 95-81 victory.
After closing the regular season with Maryland and Carolina, the Blue Devils had to beat those same two teams to win the ACC Tournament. The Maryland game was another thriller as Duke pulled out an 84-82 win. The final was anticlimactic as the Tar Heels, suddenly falling apart, laid an egg in a 79-53 loss.
Their march through the NCAA Tournament was businesslike. Boozer returned in the Sweet 16 matchup against UCLA. Sanders remained in the starting lineup while Boozer came off the bench. He didn’t do much in the regionals, just getting his feet wet again, but the Blue Devils didn’t really need him.
The Final Four brought the fourth meeting of the season between Duke and Maryland, who had just upset Stanford to win the West. Maryland played a terrific first half and led by eleven. Duke chipped away in the second half. There wasn’t a single decisive moment. The Blue Devils finally took the lead with about five minutes remaining, and Maryland would never get it back. Duke executed better down the stretch.
Arizona awaited in the final. The preseason #1 Wildcats had muddled through a disappointing regular season, but they got it going in mid-February. This was a tremendously talented team with Richard Jefferson, Gilbert Arenas, Loren Woods, and Luke Walton. Duke would stretch the lead out to 8-10 points, then Arizona would make a run and cut it to two or three, but they never could get the lead. They had it down to three as late as 2:30, but ultimately they could not come up with enough stops and the Blue Devils salted it away to secure Coach K’s third national championship.
Looking at the roster, they are one of just a handful of teams in league history with two first team All-Americans. They are the only team in college basketball history with two different players who each won a national player of the year honor. Williams was the NABC Player of the Year while Battier swept the rest. The supporting cast of Boozer, Dunleavy, James, and Duhon was exceptional.
As for numbers… they have the second-highest (after 1999 Duke) kenpom Adjusted Efficiency Margin since he started tracking in 1997. Offensively, they were overwhelming. They are the most prolific three-point shooting team in ACC history – the only team to average 10+ made threes per game. But they were also 7th nationally in two-point percentage. They didn’t turn it over and were excellent on the offensive glass. Defensively, they had the NABC Defensive Player of the Year in Battier. They are one of only two teams in league history (1999 Maryland) with over 400 steals. I suspect, but have not confirmed, that they forced more turnovers than any other team in league history. The defensive fundamentals were solid as well. They held opponents to an Effective FG% of 45.8, good for 29th nationally. There was one weakness in that they were pretty bad on the defensive glass. That kind of cancelled out how good they were on the offensive glass; most of their games that year involved both teams pulling down a ton of offensive rebounds. The difference was, Duke’s offensive boards turned into made threes, while the other team’s turned into misses or turnovers.
This team is a bit high in losses for an all-time great. There are 28 other teams in ACC history with four losses or fewer. But they played an incredibly difficult schedule, going 13-4 against ranked teams. They swept the ACC and NCAA Tournaments. Despite the schedule, they still have the fourth-largest average margin of victory (1999 Duke, 1973 NC State, 1998 Duke) in league history. There’s no question about their position as one of the greatest.