With 4 minutes and 25 seconds left in the second half, Duke, the No. 1 overall seed in the entire NCAA tournament, finally took its first lead against a No. 16 seed from the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. It had taken them that long. And yes, they had walked into the game thinking it would be easy.

As Duke senior Maliq Brown puts it: “We thought it was going to be a cakewalk coming into this game, now we know what it is, so we just have to respond back.”

Maliq Brown’s statement is understandable in one sense. But understandable does not make it appropriate, and it certainly does not make it smart. Basketball analyst Mike O’Donnell did not mince words, calling Maliq Brown’s statement outright disrespectful to the opponent. That is simply not something you say publicly. As BJ Taylor summed it up, “It’s unbelievable. You can’t say that.”

According to Taylor, “Duke came out and played like a team that thought Siena was going to be a cakewalk with the way that they approached this game.” And of course, the stats tell exactly that story. The Blue Devils shot a season-low 19 percent from three-point range, going just 5 for 26 from beyond the arc. By halftime, they were trailing by as many as 11 points and walked into the halftime locker room down 43-32. That was the first time in NCAA Tournament history that a No. 1 seed had trailed a No. 16 seed by double digits at the break.

Brown’s confidence wasn’t baseless. As the nation’s top-ranked team with an ACC title, Duke’s matchup against a 23-11 Siena team looked like a mismatch on paper, making a comfortable win the universal expectation. And it would be dishonest to suggest any other team with Duke’s résumé would not have felt similarly. A cakewalk? Perhaps that is too strong. But a comfortable win? Most would have expected exactly that. 

The problem, however, is not the expectation; it is the mentality that comes with it. As Mike O’Donnell put it: “That mentality means you can turn on and off, and you can’t turn on and off in a tournament.” Yes, in a single-elimination format where one bad half can end your entire season, that is not a switch any team can afford to flip, regardless of how dominant their regular-season résumé looks on paper.

Maliq Brown and the Duke Blue Devils have survived this scare. In the next round, they will face No. 9 seed TCU. And if Thursday’s performance taught them anything, it is that no opponent in this tournament deserves to be taken lightly. 

Jon Scheyer Labels Duke’s Near-Upset by Siena as Simply “the Nature of the Tournament”

In a tournament like the NCAA, nothing is ever as soft as butter. Any team, on any given day, can hurt you, regardless of seeding, reputation, or regular-season dominance. And Duke’s head coach, Jon Scheyer, knows that better than most. 

Rather than hitting the panic button after his team’s near-disaster against Siena, Scheyer has maintained the position that the scare was not alarming. If anything, it was expected. Following Duke’s victory, he said, “It’s not concerning from the standpoint that, unfortunately, this is the nature of the tournament. Look, I wish it could just be smooth sailing.”

By Scheyer’s assessment, Siena deserved enormous credit. They were incredibly ready to play, and Duke, for large stretches of the game, was not. As he puts it, “We made some mistakes early that they made us pay for.” 

And of course, shooting a season-low 19 percent from three-point range is a mistake. In a single-elimination tournament, that kind of mistake can end your season if you do not find a way to correct it quickly. On Thursday, Duke barely did. Hopefully, they will not wait until they need corrections in the next game.