RALEIGH – Back and forth went the first 12 minutes of Sunday’s game at Lenovo Center.
And then a couple of Duke runs before halftime is why Duke is headed back to the Sweet 16.
The No. 1-seed Blue Devils took control of a second-round game with two big runs before halftime and closed out 9-seed Baylor, 89-66, to advance in the NCAA tournament.
Duke (33-3) will face the winner of Sunday night’s latest game, between 5-seed Oregon and 4-seed Arizona, in the Sweet 16 on Thursday in Newark, N.J.
In 15 trips to the NCAA tournament as a 1-seed, Duke has never failed to reach the Sweet 16.
Cooper Flagg scored 18 points and had nine rebounds and six assists; he scored 15 in the first half, and then spread the wealth of his stats in the second. Tyrese Proctor continued his heater with seven 3-pointers and had 25 points, a career-high for the junior guard.
Duke’s 36th kill shot of the season — a metric from EvanMiya that’s a run of at least 10 straight points — came after the Blue Devils trailed 24-23 with about 7½ minutes until halftime.
It was a 10-0 run and seven of those points came at the free-throw line. Toward the end of the run, Duke drew the second and third fouls on Norchad Omier.
The Blue Devils added their 37th kill shot of the season before halftime.
They scored the last 12 points of the first half. That started with a five-point burst from Flagg, draining a pull-up 3 that led to Baylor coach Scott Drew calling his second timeout of the half. Duke’s run continued through a flagrant-1 called against Baylor’s Marino Dubravcic, with Patrick Ngongba II making a couple of free throws.
After those free throws, Sion James threw an alley-oop from close to halfcourt for Flagg to flush home his 14th and 15th points of the first half.
Duke closed things out in the second half with a slow drip. Baylor (20-15) never came within single digits of Duke's lead.
Former Blue Devil Jeremy Roach hit his first shot, a 3-pointer. He finished with seven points on 3-for-10 shooting.
Duke’s starting lineup was as usual, a return to form that first took hold in Friday’s first-round game. That lineup is now 25-1 this season.
