WASHINGTON, D.C. — Huddles are supposed to be the holiest of spaces, the one place where five basketball players can block out five opponents and tens of thousands of fans and regroup, in good times and bad, whether in need of a pump up or a calm down.

But UConn veteran Alex Karaban also recognized it as a sign of No. 1 overall seed Duke wilting under the pressure as the Blue Devils’ lead shrunk and shrunk and shrunk and then, on Braylon Mullins‘ game-winner for the ages, disappeared altogether. 

“You feel the momentum swing, you feel them start to huddle up a lot more, really just get tight,” Karaban said. “You can just tell. When you’re a player, you can tell when the momentum’s swinging and when the other team is trying to regroup themselves.”

Karaban knows the magic of March well. He has two national titles and is now headed to another Final Four.

Duke coach Jon Scheyer knows the agony, the brutality, the suddenness of March even better.

Somehow, Duke — for all its talent, all its dominance, all its moments of pure basketball brilliance — has collapsed again. Scheyer bore the brunt of it last year, when the Blue Devils blew a seven-point lead with 1:15 left in the Final Four against Houston. Sunday’s was worse, on the wrong end of a 19-point UConn comeback that tied for sixth largest in NCAA Tournament history, with an all-time dagger to boot. 

One collapse can be credited to the madness of March, perhaps. A second? It’s a downright failure from everyone, and a failure from Scheyer. He cannot, in the exact moment, control whether a Cooper Flagg game-winning attempt goes down in 2025 (it did not). He cannot, in the exact moment, pull the plug on whatever idea Cayden Boozer had to even try and pass the baksetball with Huskies swarming and the clock ticking (Boozer of course put the ball in the air). But a coach can keep his players composed, keep them aggressive in the right spots, and keep them playing their game. Scheyer is failing to do that. 

“There’s not a person in this room, including me, that doesn’t replay everything that you could do and how you can help,” Scheyer said. “I mean, obviously. That’s part of being in this seat. That’s part of being in this spot. … End of the day, we’ve got to finish it off. We’ll reflect. We’ll learn, do all that. But yeah, of course.”

It simply isn’t good enough.

The anatomy of a titanic Duke collapse

Incredibly, UConn actually made a mistake on the play that led to Mullins’ three. Down 72-70, the Huskies were supposed to foul Dame Sarr, who received the ball after inbounding to Cameron Boozer. But they couldn’t get there in time — you can even see on replay Jayden Ross desperately reaching for Sarr — and Sarr zipped a pass to Cayden Boozer. With under seven seconds left, all he had to do was hold onto the ball and get fouled.

“I should have been strong with the ball,” Cayden Boozer said, tears in his eyes, emotions at once swelling and muting his voice. “I cost our team our season. We knew that they were gonna trap. [Scheyer said] ‘Be strong with the ball.’”

But one play did not blow a 19-point lead. One play did not blow a 15-point halftime lead; No. 1 seeds had been 134-0 in NCAA Tournament when leading by that margin at the break, by the way.

“There’s no heat on Cayden at all,” freshman Nik Khamenia said. “This game is not on him at all. He carried us for long, long, long portions of the game, making big play after big play. You can go through every single one of us at different points in the game we messed up. The game of basketball never relies on one possession, so, no, it’s not on him at all.”

This was a collapse from the moment the teams took the floor in the second half.

Duke could have surged. Duke should have surged. The Blue Devils had dominated UConn’s guards, picked apart UConn’s defense and generally gotten whatever it want offensively. Scheyer can’t go out and make the plays for his players, but he can instill them the small advantages to succeed in tough moments — the mental fortitude, the X’s and O’s, the calm nature required of a champion. Either he didn’t instill it Sunday, or his players were unable to instill it in themselves.

“I think as a whole we could have gave a lot more in the second half,” Cameron Boozer said. “We came out a little flat and gave them a little bit of life. When you’re playing a team as good as UConn, that’s all they really need.”

“We didn’t have our competitive edge,” Cayden Boozer said. “We were guarding them pretty well in the first half. We didn’t do the best job of it, but at the end of the day, I’m sticking with our guys no matter what. We had a chance to win no matter what in the second half.”

“In some moments we kind of let up a little bit, we let them off the hook,” Sarr said. “Just … I don’t know.”

Halftime adjustments are generally overrated as a concept. Every coach makes them — some more successfully than others — but it’s up to the players to fulfill them.

Duke’s didn’t, and the issues became apparent immediately. UConn star big man Tarris Reed Jr. had 12 points at halftime, and UConn, even down big, never stopped feeding him. He drew fouls in bunches and got the Huskies into the bonus before the second half was even six minutes old.

After four turnovers in the first half, Duke had eight in the second half. The offense got stagnant: Over the final eight minutes, Duke had as many field goals as turnovers (four), and only one of the makes was assisted. Prior to that, 16 of their 21 makes had been assisted.

“It’s easy to look at that play,” Scheyer said. “I look at every play that happened, especially in that second half, this is not about one play. It’s about every play that put us in that position, and that’s what you don’t want to do, where one play something could happen.”

Duke’s nightmarish déjà vu

Could Scheyer have saved the offense? It’s impossible to say. Could he have saved the defense, maybe putting Cameron Boozer on Reed, rather than have Boozer guard one of the ball handlers? Again, it’s hard to say. The game plan he had drawn up in the first half had worked, after all. It’s easy to praise players when things go well and fault coaches when things go poorly.

“I don’t have the words,” Scheyer said after the loss. “I don’t have the words.”

The problem? He needed to have the words during the game. If he had the words, he needed them to resonate more.

“I’m sure there’s a lot more that I could have done to help our guys at the end there,” Scheyer said after last year’s Final Four loss. “That’s the thing that kills me the most. The amount of game situations we’ve watched this year. We haven’t had the real-life experience all the time, but that’s something I really felt we prepared for. So I feel like I let our guys down in that regard.”

And this year?

“I’m incredibly sorry for these guys that they’ve got to go through this,” Scheyer said. “This is on us.”

Just like Scheyer can’t make the plays or avoid the mistakes on the court, he also can’t control some circumstances. Patrick Ngongba II missed five games — including the first round of the NCAA Tournament — earlier this month. Point guard Caleb Foster broke his foot just over three weeks ago and made a miraculous recovery to not only play but shine in the Sweet 16. However, Foster was ineffective in the Elite Eight. He hadn’t even practiced five-on-five with the team since the injury, and playing a second game in two days was always going to be an uphill battle.

These are not excuses. These are facts. Is a healthy Foster on the floor in Cayden Boozer’s spot in the final seconds? Does he avoid that turnover? In some aspects, Scheyer was correct when he told CBS sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson, “All I know is these guys don’t deserve that ending.”

The issue is that implies anyone deserves anything in the NCAA Tournament. No one does. Not Duke, not UConn, not any player or any team. You have to take it. You have to earn it. You have to be the aggressor. You can’t lose your way for a moment. Scheyer’s teams have now done it twice. His teams’ youth has been celebrated for months and then exposed in the crucial moments each of the last two seasons.

“We’re playing this 10-to-12, 10-to-11-point game, and we knew once we got under 10, once we cut it to single digits, it was going to be over,” Reed said. “You can really see it in their faces. The body language is a huge indicator.”

In an alternate universe, Boozer’s throw-ahead pass connects, and Duke gets an easy dunk and is onto the Final Four. In an alternate universe, Silas Demary Jr.’s high ankle sprain costs him an inch or two more on his jump, and he doesn’t tip the ball away.

“We’ve been telling the guys the whole year, there’s a very famous quote that says, ‘Victory is measured in inches, not miles,’” Dan Hurley explained.

But the inches have gone against Scheyer’s No. 1-seeded teams twice now, showing he has miles to go to get over the hump.

That doesn’t mean he can’t cover those miles. Roy Williams won 40 NCAA Tournament games before winning his first title. He ended up with three championships. Scheyer’s predecessor at Duke, Mike Krzyzewski won 26 NCAA Tournament games before winning his first title. He ended up with five.

But in order to cover those miles, Scheyer must get his teams to close consistently. He has to find a message that hits home, a strategy that works. He has to find a way to empower his players, and more importantly have players who empower each other in the biggest moments.

Duke’s NCAA Tournament finishes under Scheyer

Scheyer, who is otherwise off to one of the best coaching starts in college basketball history, must eventually get lucky.

The 38-year-old said he had never seen a locker room like Sunday’s before, but that’s not true. There must have been a similar scene after the Houston loss. He was likely caught up in the moment, which is OK in the moment. But in the weeks and months and, yes, maybe even years to come, he’ll have to find away to avoid having more of those mistake-riddled, regret-filled locker rooms.

The locker room was a mess. Blood, sweat and tears. Lots and lots of tears, some body-shaking, some subdued. Answers barely above whispers. Handshakes and hugs. More tears. Ngongba covered his face with a towel and eventually excused himself. Cameron Boozer, sporting a black eye, and Cayden Boozer took questions with poise beyond their years. The bumps and bruises the team had prided itself on just days earlier after a hard-fought win over St. John’s now represented a team stunningly beaten down.

After the St. John’s win, as media members left the locker room, one Duke player joyously shouted out “No team can f**k with us!”

Perhaps not. But March Madness sure can.