Why a summer of seething helped Duke basketball advance to NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16

This, as Tyrese Proctor bluntly put it Sunday, is why he’s still a Duke basketball player.

Taking part in a blowout win in the NCAA Tournament’s second round, a 93-55 romp over James Madison at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, allowed Proctor and four other starters who returned from last season to revel in experiencing something new.

Duke won an ACC championship in Jon Scheyer’s first season as its head coach in 2023 but the Blue Devils couldn’t get out of the NCAA Tournament’s first weekend.

In the weeks that followed, Proctor, Kyle Filipowski, Mark Mitchell and Jeremy Roach all pledged to keep playing college basketball for the Blue Devils. The sting of the 65-52 loss to Tennessee that ended last season lingered.

“Obviously we lost last year and it wasn’t what we wanted,” Proctor said. “That’s the reason why our main guys came back.”

Duke’s ultimate goal is to make the Final Four and win the program’s sixth NCAA championship. It’s why photos of State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, which will house this year’s Final Four, were visible all over the Blue Devils’ training facilities last summer.

But to get there, the Blue Devils had to get here — past the tournament’s first weekend and into the regional semifinals. The bridge too far from a year ago has been crossed with ease.

“None of us forgot about what happened with Tennessee in the second round,” Filipowski said. “I think that just added a little bit more fire to us, to the returning guys, and we knew it was going to be a similar type of game. I think we learned our lesson playing last year. We didn’t want to repeat that at all. Just learned and moved on from that and I think that showed tonight.”

And oh did it show.

After seeing James Madison rattle Wisconsin with its pressure to take a 15-4 lead in Friday night’s first round on the way to a 72-61 win, the Blue Devils were determined to take the fight to the Dukes first.

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