One of Duke's major blunders in the first half was failing to anticipate that TTU would run Xu Ling at point guard. Furthermore, this point guard didn't bother with conventional playmaking duties—he initiated his own offense right out of the gate, rattling off ten straight points.
After Xu Ling's ten-point flurry, Duke called a timeout. Mike Krzyzewski's other mistake was misjudging Xu Ling's composure under pressure.
From the opening tip, Duke had disrupted TTU's offensive rhythm with perimeter traps on the wing. It was a sound scheme; space on the wing was cramped and passing lanes were constricted.
However, once Xu Ling shifted his attack to the top of the key, the entire complexion changed. Unless the defense featured five long, athletic freaks like Kevin Durant, completely sealing off passing lanes from the top of the key was an impossible task.
Just as Knight had envisioned, Xu Ling's relentless scoring threat bent Duke's entire defense out of shape, unlocking easy opportunities for his teammates.
The primary beneficiary was sophomore guard Alan Voskuil, who had come off the bench to replace Jarrius Jackson and reaped the full tactical reward.
Voskuil was the archetype of a player with zero NBA prospects who was nonetheless deadly at the NCAA level. He could handle the ball, had no blind spots from beyond the arc, and could effortlessly pull up from deep range. As long as someone else commanded defensive gravity, he delivered reliable production.
Yet even without an answer for TTU's perimeter duo, Duke still had Josh McRoberts, a former top-ranked high school recruit in the nation, to anchor them.
McRoberts made his presence felt over the closing minutes of the first half. Everything he would eventually fail to replicate in the NBA—face-up drives from the high post, a kaleidoscope of low-post scoring moves, tenacious rebounding, and elite rim protection—he unleashed against TTU in full force.
Thanks to McRoberts's performance, Duke avoided the sudden collapse that had unraveled Niagara University.
Still, the upper hand had already been established.
By halftime, Xu Ling had propelled the Red Raiders to a 46–38 lead over the Blue Devils on the strength of 19 points, 6 rebounds, and 4 assists.
"Eli! Eli! Let's go! Let's go!"
The TTU cheering section erupted with deafening roars.
Xu Ling offered a distant nod without lingering.
At the half, Bob Knight stepped aside for an interview with ESPN.
The sideline reporter couldn't resist bringing up Xu Ling's repeated provocations toward Coach K. "Coach, what do you make of Eli's behavior? Why haven't you put a stop to it?"
Knight replied without a flicker of emotion, "I told him he can do whatever he wants."
Had Xu Ling been there to hear it, he would have scoffed: *Bravo, Coach. Outright lying on national television.*
Meanwhile, NBA general managers throughout the arena were actively debating Xu Ling's first-half showing.
Several franchises had been tracking him for months, but seeing him elevate his game on the March Madness stage forced comparisons with the other marquee prospects of the draft class.
Greg Oden was an enigma; his performances in most games felt like an hourglass, trickling out only a fixed amount at any given time.
Kevin Durant had been hailed as the greatest freshman in history, but that narrative rested largely on raw numbers. Down the stretch of the season, Xu Ling's statistics had virtually pulled even. More importantly, his game displayed far more dimensions.
"The question now," Kevin McHale said to the staff beside him, "is how much of what he's doing in college translates to the NBA?"
By coincidence, Sonics general manager Sam Presti, equally immersed in scouting the rookie class, voiced a similar reservation. "A couple of years ago, Adam Morrison looked like Larry Bird resurrected from the void. In the end, he was merely a shadow cast by Bird."
"Sam," a colleague chimed in, "Eli doesn't have diabetes."
"I know, but the sample size is still too small." Presti's hesitation wasn't about whether Xu Ling possessed elite upside, but rather where that upside ranked in the 2007 draft class. Top five? Top three? Or top two?
Top five was one thing, top three was another, and top two belonged to a completely different stratosphere.
A top-two projection implied that he had flatly surpassed Kevin Durant. Yet not even Greg Oden could definitively claim to have surpassed Durant. If Xu Ling had genuinely eclipsed Durant, was there even a gap between him and Oden?
Inside the locker room during halftime, Knight commended every player on the roster—except Jarrius Jackson.
"J.J., I am sick and tired of riding you! Truly sick of it!" Knight's voice brimmed with venom. "I would love nothing more than to thank you for your four years of service, but you need to step up when this team needs you most! I refuse to accept that one of the finest players I have ever coached is a soft coward!"
Hearing those scathing words, Jackson's teammates could feel the fury boiling inside him. He looked desperately in need of an outlet to vent it.
"You're staying in the starting lineup, but understand this: you owe this team!"
Knight's textbook bully-style motivation reminded Xu Ling of former Houston Rockets center and sideline-inbound maestro Zhou Qi, who once remarked during a broadcast: *The most infuriating coaches to play for are the know-it-all schoolmasters with barely half a bucket of water to their name!*
Knight was practically the definition of a schoolmaster. The difference was that his bucket wasn't half-empty—it was overflowing. Perhaps because he had so much water sloshing around in his head, his judgment often flooded, producing an unending catalog of controversies.
Knight then shifted into serious tactical adjustments for the second half, barking, "Only by completely breaking Josh McRoberts will this victory be ours. Remember, the team advancing to the Sweet Sixteen tonight is going to be the Red Raiders!"
The locker room instantly erupted into a fever pitch.
Pat Knight and Chris Beard caught fire as well.
Beard in particular pumped his fist, shouting with genuine emotion, "Now that's coaching!"
Xu Ling felt no sudden surge of adrenaline. Instead, a wry thought crossed his mind: if Coach K had possessed Beard's supreme brownnosing skills, his relationship with Knight might have lasted forever.
From the moment the second half commenced, Red Raiders team captain Jarrius Jackson played like a man possessed, flying around on defense with ruthless intensity.
Naturally, raw ferocity didn't automatically equate to great defense, but that relentless edge was precisely what Knight demanded.
Suffocating pressure inevitably bred mistakes.
Duke coughed up a turnover on an errant pass. Xu Ling pushed the tempo in transition, and before he even crossed half-court, Jackson had already sprinted into position on the wing.
Xu Ling fired a laser across the floor.
Jackson drilled the pull-up three.
Duke countered by bringing Josh McRoberts up to the high post to initiate. Knight's adjustment was simple: put Xu Ling on him.
It was a mirror image of the Rockets deploying Tracy McGrady to guard Dirk Nowitzki during their playoff series years earlier.
The underlying logic was identical.
Rather than letting a mediocre frontcourt defender go through the motions, give the matchup to the most gifted player on the floor.
This tactical wrinkle proved Knight had seen through McRoberts's tough exterior to the hesitant core underneath.
Xu Ling crowded McRoberts, progressively forcing his operating space further away from the basket. McRoberts was left with two choices: pull up for a contested jumper like Nowitzki, or put the ball on the floor. But against Xu Ling's smothering pressure, his handle fell apart.
Xu Ling read his frantic instinct to pass before the ball even left his hands.
*Smack!*
Xu Ling picked his pocket, flipping Duke's set offense into an immediate defensive scramble once again.
"Steal by Eli! TTU is running! Out on the perimeter, Jarrius Jackson... drains it!"
"He strikes again! Jarrius Jackson has awakened from his slumber, knocking down back-to-back triples to stretch TTU's lead to 14!"
"Duke calls a timeout!"
"Eli, brilliant defense! That's the best damn defensive stand I've ever seen!" Knight roared, clutching his clipboard. "They're out of answers! Keep suffocating them—they'll eventually look for McRoberts again! Watch his post moves!"
Since arriving at Texas Tech, Xu Ling hadn't seen Knight this completely locked in.
Knight had been coaching all season, of course, but tonight's energy and tactical clarity operated on an entirely different level.
Perhaps it was the Duke brand, perhaps it was Coach K's presence, or perhaps he sensed that a fourth national championship was no longer a pipe dream. Whatever the reason, his fiery posture evoked memories of Indiana University in the 1980s—the absolute summit of his career.
Mike Krzyzewski had few levers left to pull. This Duke squad suffered from a glaring flaw compared to his past rosters: it lacked an undisputed floor leader.
Once the opposition tightened the screws or the offense stalled out, he had nobody capable of putting the team on their back.
In moments like this, all he could do was funnel the ball to the player with the highest probability of success.
For Duke, that man was Josh McRoberts.
Pinning the game's decisive moments on an unreliable anchor made Duke's impending fate easy to foresee.
Coach K mechanically finished drawing up his final adjustments and watched his players walk back out onto the floor.
He dared not entertain hopes of a comeback; a suffocating weight coiled around him like freezing chains. A sudden thought struck him: *How am I any different right now from Coach Knight after 1993?*
Knight's golden era of the 1980s had long since faded, and the magnificent 1990s that defined Duke's storied rise were over a decade in the rearview mirror. An invisible wall loomed directly before Krzyzewski.
He wanted to win another title—one that would push his tally past Knight's three championships. But what would that truly achieve? Becoming the 'greatest coach of the modern NCAA era'? Would that laurel bring him genuine peace? Would Coach Knight feel a shred of pride for him? No, whatever pride once existed had withered away years ago.
Both Knight and Krzyzewski understood in their hearts that the core of their rift stemmed from the fact that both wanted to be crowned the greatest. If Krzyzewski wished to ascend that solitary throne, he could not bear the label of 'disciple' upon his crown; it diminished his greatness. Thus, with every rung Duke climbed toward the summit, he had deliberately accentuated his differences from Knight, doing everything in his power to step out from his mentor's towering shadow.
It was that unilateral severance that had brought them to this very day.
He had trampled upon Knight's greatest sacred cow: loyalty. Knight certainly desired to be the greatest college coach of all time, but he could accept being surpassed—especially by his own disciple; that would have brought him profound satisfaction. Knight's sole longing was that on the day of Krzyzewski's coronation, Mike would humbly acknowledge: *Without the General, I could never have reached these heights.*
That was the tribute Knight felt entitled to, and Coach K had refused to pay it. For that, Knight would never forgive him.
Play resumed. A fourteen-point deficit was neither insurmountable nor small, yet it felt like a chasm gaping between the two teams. This possession was paramount.
Texas Tech's man-to-man defense clamped down without a breath of daylight, even Jarrius Jackson staying glued to his matchup. After fruitless attempts to puncture the perimeter, Duke had no choice but to dump the ball inside to Josh McRoberts, banking on an isolation score in the paint.
This was the exact moment Xu Ling had been stalking.
Like a crouching leopard, his watchful eyes had already exposed McRoberts's fatal weakness: once he initiated his move, his vision narrowed exclusively to the rim. It was a crippling habit, and it offered a predator as calculating as Xu Ling the perfect opening to strike.
McRoberts executed a drop step, flashed a pump fake, and baited Darryl Dora off his feet. He threw himself into a rugged low-post move, desperate to hoist the Blue Devils' banner and keep the game's flickering hopes alive. Yet the instant the ball left his fingertips, TTU's No. 1 materialized from his blind spot like a phantom. Xu Ling exploded upward, his apex soaring far above McRoberts's release point, and with a thunderous smack, swatted the airborne ball ruthlessly into the hardwood!
"What a block! Eli completely buries Josh McRoberts at the rim!"
"TTU on the break!"
Xu Ling streaked down the court like an arrow loosed from a bow. Martin Zeno pushed the ball with lightning speed, orchestrating a textbook three-man fast break. As Zeno crossed the arc, he whipped a crisp bounce pass into Xu Ling's stride. The only defender standing in his path was DeMarcus Nelson, Duke's most explosive perimeter athlete.
Gathering the ball in his stride, Xu Ling launched himself into the air like a launched missile. His frame, denser and more powerful than his opponent's, absorbed the mid-air contact and obliterated any resistance, bowling Nelson backward like a war god parting mortals. A ferocious roar tore from the depths of Xu Ling's chest as the veins along his right arm surged. Cocking the ball back, he brought it down toward the cylinder with cataclysmic ferocity!
*BOOM!*
The ball tore through the net, rattling the rim and shaking the stanchion.
It wasn't merely a poster dunk; it was an absolute detonation.
And blown away in that blast was not just DeMarcus Nelson, but the entire season of the Duke Blue Devils.
Chapter 32