CHAPEL HILL – Another blowout would’ve been boring.

Duke turned the ball over more times than it had since late January. Cooper Flagg had three fouls in the first half. North Carolina made its first four shots of the second half and led by seven a couple of minutes later.

This juggernaut of a Duke team still won by 13.

“The energy was crazy for them. For us, it was just weathering the storm, taking the first punch and staying focused,” Flagg said after Duke’s 82-69 win at the Smith Center on Saturday night.

In other words: Business as usual for a team that has lost once since Thanksgiving.

Flagg walked out of this building with the ACC’s regular-season trophy, the Blue Devils (28-3, 19-1 ACC) having won the most league games in the conference’s history. He did so after another of surreal all-around performances, with 15 points, nine rebounds, six assists and four blocks.

The soon-to-be No. 1 draft pick did so after playing nine minutes in the first half because of those fouls; he never came off the court in the second half.

“It was hard for me to find my rhythm,” Flagg said. “I think they probably had a good game plan, did a good job of limiting my catches.

“But I think just coming out in the second half, keeping a strong face, keeping strong body language, that’s what Coach (Jon Scheyer) was telling me. So I was just stayed ready and was able to come out and perform.”

As has been the case for most of Duke’s games, Flagg was part of the story — dominant by way of just how many ways he impacts a game.

It wasn’t — it never has been — just about Flagg.

Kon Knueppel led Duke with 17 points, starting with an impossible-angle shot from the baseline on the first possession of the game. In both games against the Tar Heels (21-11, 13-7), Knueppel scored a combined 39 points on 14-for-21 shooting.

Sion James and Tyrese Proctor had 16 points apiece. That much is a season-high for James, the Tulane transfer who has embraced his lone season in Durham and everything that has come with it.

“It was crazy, I loved it,” James said of playing in the Smith Center and its crowd of 21,750. “You guys have gotta understand, like, this is why you come to Duke, for games like this when the crowd is rolling.

“They have a really good team over there, it’s a good game, the fans are into it, the Dean Dome is a special place. It was awesome.”

This building was never louder than when it looked like Duke was on the ropes.

When UNC made its first four shots of the second half, the first one tied the game for the first time since it was 0-0 and the second one gave the Tar Heels their first lead. The fourth make gave UNC a 52-47 lead and Scheyer had seen enough, calling a timeout.

“I thought they played at a really high level,” Scheyer said of UNC. “To be able to withstand that and then get back to our identity of playing defense down the stretch, I think that’s really the story.”

Here was the best example of that: That fourth made was by RJ Davis, the fifth-year senior playing his final home game. It put him at 20 points with 17:41 left.

He ended with 20 points. UNC had four field goals across the last 12½ minutes, finishing on a 4-for-23 skid.

Duke’s lockdown on the defensive end eventually led to a 12-0 run. That turned a six-point deficit into a six-point lead with 9:40 left.

Around that time was when the Blue Devils got contributions from two unlikely sources off the bench.

Caleb Foster had a driving bucket, a block and dove on the floor for a loose ball, tipping it to James and leading to a transition layup. All of that coming after the sophomore guard didn’t play Monday night and didn’t get into the game in the first half.

“The majority of the time, if not all the time, guys can pout, quit, make an excuse,” Scheyer said. “I’m sure he’s pissed at me, that’s fine, that’s good. I’m all for that. But his attitude was … he just had such a competitiveness about him the last couple of days. I thought, as we got into the game, I thought we were missing what he had.”

The other unlikely source — that term used loosely — was Maliq Brown, more for how he contributed.

Brown played for the first time since suffering a separated left shoulder at Virginia on Feb. 17. Scheyer said he’s only been able to practice with contact for the last couple of days.

His defense was as you’d expect. But the defensive savant who had made two 3s all season made two of them in a 5-minute span, at the 8:32 and 3:33 marks of the second half.

They were backbreakers for a UNC team that needed to win to secure an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

“Maliq’s a gamer,” Scheyer said. “He’s special. I don’t know, to shoot those 3s in this moment — the one thing about being off this amount of time, he has shot a ton.”

The exclamation point was Flagg’s two-handed dunk and pull-up on the rim, for Duke’s last two points, that made it an 82-67 lead with 1½ minutes left.

“When Cooper is aggressive like that, there’s no one in the country who can do anything with him,” James said of Flagg’s second half.

And so, it all comes full circle, back to Flagg. He’s part of the reason Duke will enter the ACC tournament as the No. 1 seed and will almost assuredly be No. 1 in the Top 25 on Monday — he’s just not the whole reason.

“A lot of guys made winning plays,” Scheyer said, “but for me, each game this year, somebody has stepped up. We have a team where all 11 scholarship players have won us games in different moments.”

Flagg was called for an offensive foul at the 12:53 mark of the first half, with Duke leading 17-12, and it was his second foul of the game.

The Blue Devils scored 19 points on the next eight possessions. A burst without the frontrunner for national player of the year on the court, Proctor scored all 10 of his first-half points in that stretch.

But Duke struggled after Flagg picked up his third foul of the first half.

That was another offensive foul, with 3:18 before halftime and the Blue Devils up nine. The Tar Heels outscored Duke 10-2 for the rest of the first half, narrowing Duke’s lead to 43-42 going into halftime.

TIP-INS: James also had eight rebounds and three steals. … Duke committed 14 turnovers, its most since 16 at Wake Forest on Jan. 25. But Duke’s last turnover came with more than nine minutes left in the game. … Duke’s e-FG clip was 64.5%, making this the 17th game of the season that number has been over 60%. … Duke is 11-0 in games officiated by Lee Cassell, who was one of the three refs for this game, since the loss at Virginia two seasons ago in which he made a mistake at the end of regulation.

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