WASHINGTON, D.C. — At least for one day, the best player in college basketball proved too much for the best team in college basketball.
Because for as excellent as both No. 1 Michigan and No. 3 Duke are, the biggest reason why the Blue Devils won out 68-63 on Saturday in the most highly-anticipated game this season?
They had Cameron Boozer, and Michigan had no answer for him.
Boozer — the current frontrunner to win the Wooden Award, and a contender to be the No. 1 pick in this summer’s NBA Draft — led Duke in points (18), rebounds (10) and assists (7) in front of the 20,537-person crowd in Capital One Arena, the highest-attended neutral-site game this season.
And boy, did it deliver.
Hours before tipoff, the NCAA Tournament selection committee further upped the ante — if that was possible — when it revealed its current top 16 seeds, with Michigan and Duke as its top two seeds. It didn’t take long for both teams to validate that logic, looking every bit like a pair of national title contenders.
But if there was any surprise, it was that, in a battle of teams with top-seven defenses nationally, both offenses faced little resistance early. Michigan started the game making eight of its first 10 shots, largely on the back of star forward Yaxel Lendeborg, who almost single-handedly matched the Blue Devils’ every bucket for the first 10 minutes of action. Lendeborg made his first five shots, and his 16 first-half points were almost half of the Wolverines’ 33.
And while the scoring for Duke was more balanced — Jon Scheyer’s team didn’t have a single double-digit scorer by halftime — the Blue Devils were nonetheless ruthlessly efficient, using Boozer’s interior prowess and passing to set up a perimeter-oriented attack that made four 3s in the first eight minutes.
Where Duke started to gain the advantage, though, was when Michigan center Aday Mara — one of the nation’s best shot blockers and passing big men — picked up his second personal foul with 13:46 to play. Duke immediately started pounding the paint in Mara’s absence, leading Michigan head coach Dusty May to roll the dice and re-insert the 7-foot-3 Spaniard with 8:29 left before halftime. But Mara didn’t even make it 90 seconds before Duke forward Nik Khamenia drew a third personal foul from him, relegating Michigan’s best post defender to the pine for the rest of the first half.
And while the first half alone featured 13 lead changes, Duke was finally able to tilt the scales in its favor over the final few minutes. The Blue Devils held Michigan scoreless for the final 3:11 of the first half, while rattling off their own 6-0 run for a two-point cushion at the half.
That defensive fortitude carried over to the second half, too, with both teams combining to shoot just 5-for-20 out of intermission. But despite picking up his second and third personal fouls in the first five minutes of the second half, Boozer increasingly started to make his presence felt — especially as a rebounder, regularly coming up with loose balls despite battling Michigan’s jumbo-sized frontcourt of Mara, the 6-foot-9 Lendeborg and Morez Johnson Jr., also 6-9.
But that’s also what made Boozer’s fourth personal foul, which came with 8:42 left to play, such an inflection point. Boozer led the Blue Devils in points (11), rebounds (8) and assists (7) at the time he went to the bench.
Duke maintained a two-possession lead with Boozer on the bench, but as the Wolverines started to surge — and after Lendeborg made a top-of-the-key 3 with 3:49 left, his first basket of the second half — Scheyer was forced to bring Boozer back in.
Ultimately, though, Duke — and Boozer — proved too much for the Wolverines, who were out-rebounded by their worst margin all season, 41-28. In that sense, it was only fitting that with Michigan down one possession late, Ngongba got his own offensive rebound to all but seal the Blue Devils’ win.
And, quite possibly, to send a new team to No. 1 in the country.