GREENSBORO, N.C. — Miles Plumlee sat in a chair in the middle of Duke's locker room Friday night looking down. When his head peered upward, the look on his face wasn't so much of shock as of unbridled disappointment.
It reflected not only Duke's 75-70 loss to Lehigh — the sixth time a 15 seed has beaten a 2 seed, and second of the day, in NCAA Tournament history — but also how Duke's season played itself out.
The Blue Devils opened the campaign on Nov. 11 escaping Belmont thanks to a missed 3-point attempt at the buzzer in Cameron Indoor Stadium and ended it losing to the Mountain Hawks of the Patriot League about 60 miles from that fabled hall in Durham, N.C.
Unlike most of Mike Krzyzewski's teams, however, this Duke bunch never really found itself. There were some amazing highs — beating Michigan State for Krzyzewski's 903rd win, winning at North Carolina at the buzzer, and pulling away from Florida State on the road — but the lows that anchor emotions will drag Duke Nation into the mud.
This was an ugly end to an unspectacular season.
"I don't have an explanation," Duke forward Mason Plumlee said when asked about the team's tentativeness Friday night. "We should have addressed it. We should have gotten on one another. But for whatever reason, we couldn't get in sync offensively in particular. It's just not good when you aren't working together and you aren't in sync."
Duke (27-7) never was, even when it had some success. It was more a collection of nice players who never fully joined together in some form of cohesion that resembled what we've seen from Duke over the last three decades. And in recent weeks, everything had quickly become a disjointed mess.
All of that was on display versus Lehigh, and you could almost sense the Mountain Hawks could smell it and went in for the kill.
"They were very bold the entire game," Krzyzewski said. "I thought that we started the game tentative, and at different times we just seemed very tentative on the offensive end. They were bold throughout, and bold won."
A lack of leadership was evident tonight as it was all season. Nobody ever stepped forward and became the team's spokesman. The players admitted after a home loss to Miami in early February they had been taking playing at home for granted, to which their legendary coach blistered them.
On Friday, they took it a step further.
"There were a lot of times we took playing for Duke for granted," sophomore guard Tyler Thornton said. "We thought because of the tradition, what's happened in the past teams playing for coach K that teams were going to lay down for us.
"And too many times this year we put ourselves in a bad position, and tonight was another one of those times, and we just weren't able to turn it around."
Senior Miles Plumlee said the Devils never developed an identity, and "if you're not strong together you're going to fall apart."
And that's exactly what happened to Duke versus Lehigh. It fell apart.
Duke was not a strong team; it was crumbling into a flaky mess, even when the Mountain Hawks couldn't shake the Devils late. A Duke basket was just that, a basket. But it was pretty obvious most of the people in the arena realized that the Duke magic that often shows up under such duress wasn't in the building.
And to that, the season ends in a manner so un-Duke-like.
"The game is a great game," Krzyzewski said. "I've been in it for 37 years and it takes you to incredible highs and it also takes you to incredible lows. And tonight's one of those lows."
