Roy Williams on the First Duke Game: That Ain't Luck

Coach said Blue Devils made plays, Heels didn't

In the first game against UNC, Duke trailed by 13 with 4:28 remaining, 10 with 2:18 left and two with three seconds left and Tre Jones on the line for one shot. Jones made an improbable play, missing a free throw on purpose, rebounding it and hitting a game-tying shot at the buzzer. Duke won in overtime on another buzzer-beating second-chance basket following a missed free throw.

Roy Williams had a message to his team after the defeat.

“After the game and the next day, I said, ‘Guys, they made plays,’” Williams said. “We can say they were lucky. You can say all that. They made plays. I think that play Tre made throwing the ball off the rim in that direction, getting it to bounce out like that was incredible. It would be hard to simulate, but you know what? He did it. That’s all that matters. Lucky or not, he did it. That’s what I said to our team. They made plays. We had plenty of opportunities. We missed free throws. They missed two free throws and got the offensive rebound, and it was something just as little as Armando (Bacot) being silly and getting two fouls hugging around. We’ve coached that a million times, and he got two fouls. Two plus three is five, and he’s sitting on the bench. It might have helped us to have a bigger guy in on those missed free throws. So it’s so many things like that, but they made plays. That’s the bottom line. We had some opportunities to make those plays not be as big as they were—we didn’t do it. So they said there was a 99% chance of us winning the game at some stage, but we lost the game. We lost the game because Duke University made the plays. We didn’t: turnovers, missed free throws, more than one, not rebounding on free throw attempts. One time, we had four guys on the lane, and the ball bounced off to the right side, and their one guy was able to tap it out. Well, do a better job of boxing him out. It’s pretty simple. I thought during the entire time there’s nothing negative I can say about their play. They made every play they had to make. Tre was phenomenal down the stretch. We couldn’t stop him. He made every shot, chased the ball down after his missed free throw and made a shot to send it to overtime. We can say all the things—oh, he was lucky. By god, that ain’t luck. I've never won a game on luck. I’ve never lost a game on luck. They made plays when we didn’t.”