Jones kept vow to Coach K in simply amazing fashion

INDIANAPOLIS

The text was simple enough. One sentence. More of a promise than statement. This won’t happen next year.

This isn’t your father’s college basketball.

This is barely your college basketball.

Duke is a national champion for a fifth time because the landscape has changed and youth has taken hold. Tyus Jones sent that text to his future coach last March, shortly after the Blue Devils were bounced in the round of 64 of the NCAA Tournament by a 14 seed in Mercer.

He sent that promise while still in high school to Mike Krzyzewski.

Jones then kept it in the most incredible of ways, scoring a game-high 23 points Monday night in leading Duke past Wisconsin 68-63 in the national final before 71,149 at Lucas Oil Stadium.

On a day the man who in 1970 fought the NBA all the way to the Supreme Court and won the right for early entry into the league was selected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Duke again stood atop the college basketball world because of how a group of first-year players executed.

Spencer Haywood had to be smiling.

The Blue Devils would score 37 second-half points and all would come from the hands of freshmen, who accounted for 60 of their team’s 68.

Read that part again.

They would overcome a nine-point deficit with just over 13 minutes remaining, beneficiaries of a favorable whistle in spots and yet also the ones who made the game’s most important plays.

Jones and center Jahlil Okafor made a pact in the ninth grade to attend the same college. They chose Duke and on Monday night scored their team’s final 12 points before embracing for a long stretch as streamers fell from the rafters above.

Okafor was limited to 22 minutes because of foul trouble, but then re-entered with 3:22 left and immediately scored. He then forced Wisconsin star Frank Kaminsky (21 points, 12 rebounds) into a bad shot and then rebounded a miss and scored again for a five-point lead with 2:10 remaining.

Some things never change. Pros make plays.

“Our (freshmen) were amazing,” Duke senior guard Quinn Cook said. “They all came in so humble, all top-20 recruits and yet they worked. They didn’t think they knew it all. They asked upperclassmen for advice all year. They just went to work and it paid off tonight. I’m grateful for those guys. For them to perform like that on a stage like this is amazing.”

Grayson Allen is a freshman. He’s the eighth man in Duke’s eight-man rotation who entered the game averaging four points. He scored 16 in 21 minutes and brought the Blue Devils back from that deficit. Should the trio of Jones and Okafor and Justise Winslow (11 points, nine rebounds) depart now for the NBA, Allen could certainly become a leading player at Duke next season.

Three players from Duke made the All-Tournament team, including Jones as the Most Outstanding Player. Okafor, who could be the first overall pick in the upcoming NBA Draft, wasn’t even on it.

Duke was about far more than one freshman.

It would have been different had Wisconsin won, the team whose jerseys don’t include names, which captured much of the nation’s interest while being led by a senior and national Player of the Year in Kaminsky and a junior in Sam Dekker and a head coach in Bo Ryan who is as colorful as he is brilliant.

It would have been special in a different way.

It would have been memorable had the coach who rose from small-college lore of winning four national titles at the Division III level also been able to cut down the nets at this one. It stung Ryan something terribly, losing the way Wisconsin did, his team not being able to get to the free-throw line as it has all season. It frustrated him to no end that the Badgers were whistled for 13 second-half fouls, that Duke reached the bonus with over 11 minutes left and shot 16 free throws after halftime to just three for Wisconsin.

“So our guys played 30-some games that way,” Ryan said of his team’s ability not to foul this season. “It’s just unfortunate that this one had to be played out that way.You can’t say anything about the officiating. C’mon. Are you trying to set me up? There were some situations where obviously our guys felt they were in position. I’m sure they felt they were in the right. Both teams are always going to feel that there’s a question or two.

“It’s just the way the game is played. But I’ve been with these guys a long time, and I’ve watched a lot of basketball. Sometimes games are played differently, and you have to go with the flow.”

It really did give us an unforgettable final, this contrast about what made up both teams. Sixteen lead changes. Five ties. It was something.

Wisconsin is easy to love, far more athletic than people seem to want to believe. Sort of ruins the image for most, I suppose.

Duke is more than ever today easy to hate for throngs of fans across the country, Krzyzewski having now moved past Adolph Rupp for the second-most national titles and trailing only John Wooden’s 10. Krzyzewski won his first at age 44; he’s now 68.

Fouls mattered in the second half. They played a part. You couldn’t watch the game and not understand that. But more than anything, how Duke’s freshmen performed over those final critical moments is why they and not Wisconsin players climbed a ladder here late Monday.

Jones sent that text, that promise, a year ago. He then kept it by being the best player in a national final, by hitting two ridiculous 3-pointers in motion off balls screens late, the first giving Duke a lead for good and the second extending the margin to eight while providing the final nail to Wisconsin’s coffin.

“It’s hard to put it into words,” Jones said. “This is just such a special group. The best team I’ve ever been a part of. We’ve worked hard all year. This has been our one goal that we were working for. No matter if it was getting up extra shots or extra running, trying to get in better shape, tough practices, just believing in one another, believing in Coach, everything they were telling us.

“We knew at the end if we could accomplish this, it was all going to be worth it.”

Duke is the national champion for a fifth time.

Youth has been served.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 100.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.