The idea of ​​getting rid of an overwhelming favorite will always persist, and Kon Knueppel made contrarian shots look smart after winning ACC Rookie of the Week honors in the opening week, but surprise! The best player on the team is also the best offensive force. Flagg finished with 24 points on Friday, making 10 of his 22 shots and converting two of his five 3-point looks.

Between the games at Kentucky and Arizona, Flagg averaged 25.0 points. No other player on the roster averaged more than 13.5, and Flagg’s 41 attempts are 10 more than anyone else on the team. In big moments, head coach Jon Scheyer wants his superstar to hold the ball, and that will be the win all season long.

Arizona entered Friday’s game with a staggering 154-81 lead on the glass through three games, but who better to counter that power than a team than the Blue Devils? Scheyer never played anyone shorter than 6-foot-1, and Duke’s size advantage resulted in a 43-30 victory on the boards.

Flagg, Khaman Maluach and Maliq Brown combined to score 16, but Duke’s size in the backcourt deserves more attention. Knueppel finished with seven rebounds, Tulane transfer Sion James had six, and returning starters Caleb Foster and Tyrese Proctor both finished with four. That’s a testament to their physicality and effort compared to other guards, and it will turn losses into wins later this year.

Duke scored 35 points in the second half thanks to 16 from Flagg, 11 from Knueppel and eight from Foster. I’ll spare you the mental math, that’s literally all 35 of the team’s points.

The fact that Flagg was the only player to make a basket in the final 10 minutes against Kentucky was the biggest contributor to that loss, and those questions weren’t answered Friday. It seems crazy to say, considering Scheyer has said all offseason that he couldn’t play anyone he wanted, but there aren’t enough reliable options in high-pressure situations. The remaining names are mostly freshmen, so maybe that will change in January or February, but it’s an ominous trend.

The Blue Devils led Kentucky by nine points at halftime last week, and Duke built a seven-point lead at halftime on Friday. The biggest difference in Tucson? The Blue Devils never let big plays turn into runs. The Wildcats make several attempts to stem the emotional tide early in the second half, most notably when Love and Carter Bryant made back-to-back threes to pull within seven with 10 minutes remaining. Flagg answered both shots with buckets of his own to keep Arizona at arm’s length, and he made his own 3-pointer two minutes later to get back up by eight.

Those are the little moments that are taken for granted in comfortable wins, but turn into devastation in comeback losses. They deserve mention.

Knueppel averaged 15.0 points per game against Maine, Army and Wofford, but he finished 5/20 from the field against Kentucky with one 3-pointer in eight attempts. During the first half against Arizona, he scored just two points while making one of four shots. Suddenly, just two weeks after looking like the team’s best scorer, questions began to arise about Knueppel’s offensive reliability.

Well, Knueppel probably kept some angry social media posts in the drafts over the last twenty minutes. He scored 11 points thanks to a trio of 3-pointers down the stretch, including a long triple with 3:56 left to make it a 12-point game. In just a few minutes he went from being a freshman in need of reexamination to being all systems normal, which is a very positive development.