How does Louisville basketball stack up vs Duke in ACC Tournament championship?
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Yes, Pat Kelsey saw the graphic Duke basketball posted to X, formerly Twitter, after he was crowned ACC Coach of the Year on Monday. Of all people, his mom sent it to him.
The Blue Devils caught a lot of flak for it — a low blow, some would say; considering just how impressive Kelsey's revival of Louisville basketball has been. But there's more to the story.
Sometime after the award was announced — it's unclear if this was before or after Kelsey saw the graphic outlining the reasons why Duke felt as if Jon Scheyer was "snubbed" — his phone rang. Scheyer was on the other end; he wanted to congratulate him on a job well done.
"I thought that was really, really, really classy," said Kelsey, who bested Scheyer by a tally of 47-25. "He could have very easily gotten it. Maybe he should have."
How about this? Why don't we roll the ball out there Saturday night at the Spectrum Center — 8:30 p.m. on ESPN, to be more specific — with an ACC Tournament championship on the line and see who has the last laugh?
It's not a stretch to say that both men would trade the hardware in a heartbeat if it meant they were the one who gets to cut down a net; especially considering the wild rides they took to be the last two standing in Charlotte.
Round 2 of U of L vs. Duke will be drastically different than the first installment on Dec. 8 inside the KFC Yum! Center, which ended in a 76-65, come-from-behind win for the Blue Devils. Kelsey likes to keep his team laser focused on the next thing; but that loss has stuck with the Cardinals.
"The execution part late in the game — getting stops," Terrence Edwards Jr. told The Courier Journal after Louisville held on for a 76-73 victory over No. 3 Clemson in Friday's semifinal round. "We were up (by) double figures on our home floor — probably close to (being) sold out."
"We all wanted another shot at Duke," Noah Waterman added. "We were waiting to play them in this championship; and now we're here."
And now Duke is the consensus No. 1 team in the country. As the graphic pointed out, the Blue Devils set ACC records for the most regular-season conference wins since it moved to a 20-game schedule in 2019-20 with 19; 10 of which were decided by 25 points or more.
Here's the catch: Scheyer will be without freshman phenom Cooper Flagg — the ACC's Player and Rookie of the Year — after he sprained his left ankle during the first half of Duke's quarterfinal victory over No. 8 Georgia Tech on Thursday. And Maliq Brown, who's second to Flagg with 1.3 steals per game, has been ruled out after he dislocated his left shoulder against the Yellow Jackets.
The Blue Devils didn't miss a beat for most of their semifinal win Friday over No. 5 North Carolina, leading for 34:46 and taking a 24-point cushion into the final 17:01 of regulation. But they escaped an upset by the slightest of margins, 74-71, after a lane violation on former Louisville forward Jae'Lyn Withers erased what would have been a game-tying free throw with four seconds on the clock.
"We had some lineups in there we hadn't had," Scheyer said. "Some of the execution and the timingprobably wasn't to the level I'd want it to be."
Kelsey had a similar message hours later, when asked to explain how Clemson's full-court press allowed it to cut what was at its largest a 15-point lead for the Cards with 3:50 standing between them and the championship game to two, 75-73, with 54 seconds to spare: "We made some ill-advised plays and could have handled some situations better."
That can't happen Saturday; the margin for error will be razor thin.
"They're the No. 1 team in the country for a reason," Chucky Hepburn said. "We've just got to get our minds right and prepare for another battle."
"Coaches will pour over film all night," Kelsey added. "We'll try to be short and sweet with our preparation tomorrow and have a smile on our face and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when the ball goes up."
The top priority: defense. Per KenPom.com, U of L has posted back-to-back defensive efficiency ratings of more than 100 points allowed per 100 possessions since a seven-game stretch from Nov. 29 through Dec. 28; during which it went 3-4.
The last game of that stretch is a significant one to Kelsey's team. Had Waterman not delivered a last-second shot over two Eastern Kentucky defenders, it would have suffered a Quad 4 loss that might have drastically altered the course of the season — players and coaches alike have said as much.
In the wake of that 78-76 win over the Colonels, the Cards had a come-to-Jesus moment. Since then, they've had 13 games with a sub-100 defensive efficiency rating.
"We said, 'All right, how can we be great? How can we be the best version of ourselves that we can possibly be?'" Kelsey said. "We all decided that we had to up the ante on the defensive end."
"It only makes our offense better," J'Vonne Hadley added, "when our defense is humming and moving around and being physical and (disruptive)."
The stakes have never been higher than they will be Saturday — a neutral-site game less than 150 miles from Duke's campus in Durham. It won't be quite as suffocating as playing in Cameron Indoor Stadium but could arguably be the most raucous environment Louisville has stepped into during a season in which it won more road games by 20-plus points than any other in program history.
"I love being in the wrong territory," Waterman said. "That's where we're going to be."
"There (are) probably some tickets available or some scalpers out there on the sidewalk," Kelsey added. "Charlotte is not too bad of a drive for Louisville; so come on up. As much of the Red Sea as we can have out there, the better."
Reach Louisville men's basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville vs Duke: Previewing ACC Tournament championship game
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