Cooper Flage And duke The teammates were days after getting a place in the last four match, and the star of the blue demons was planning for the future.
It was not about anything on the field. He was ready next time Khaman Maluach and Patrick Ngonga The water cannons erupted in the cold ponds.
“I definitely ask for one too,” Flage said with a smile.
Perhaps it was, but the 18 -year -old game was more advanced than the opening advice for the first time in the college. Registration. Reward. Prepare team colleagues as a playmaker, then help them as a defender. Everything has done amid high expectations like No. 1 potential in general The American Professional League The possibility project, the driving force with an uncompromising competitive advantage and the mature focus of the team now, are two national championships.
For this reason, Flagg was named after Associated Press Men’s university basketball The best player in the year on Friday, to become the fourth student who won the award in its 64 -year -old history.
The team won 6 feet, 9 feet and 205 pounds from Nioport Oporne star John Brom. Both players were the first consensus in the AP All-Mamerican team with teams in the last game, and they were the only ones who got the votes of a player from the year, as Flagg got 41 out of 61.
Flagg joins Duke Zion Williamson (2019), Kentucky‘s Anthony Davis (2012) and Texas star Kevin Durant (2007) as student winners. Each of them went either No. 1 or No. 2 in general in the American Professional League draft after a few months. Flagg is the eighth Duke player who wins the award, and most of any program.
“He plays hard, he is a competitor, a great teammate in the team,” said John Shayer, after the end of the Blue Devils home, and his ability is clear.
“High level, high expectations”
Flagg 17 was only when he reached Duke after re -classification early in high school. However, all the noise exceeded the best employment in the country, as Flagg led Duke in the scoring (18.9 points per game), the apostasy (7.5), and helps (4.2) and theft (1.4) during the second place in the blocks (1.3) entering the national semi -finals on Saturday against Houston.
“I grabbed myself at a high level, high expectations,” Flagg told AP. “Just because I know how much the work I set and the number of hours I spent in grinding and putting this work in it … They are those expectations of confidence only with what you do and do it to the highest level.”
And he did it over and over again.
[MORE: Inside the mind of Duke’s Cooper Flagg: ‘He wants to destroy his competition’]
Record Atlantic Coast Conference A student scored 42 points against Notradam. There was a prominent transition in the transition against Pittsburgh. The big game to help Blue Devils to overcome Broime’s Tigers, along with going to 30 points in NCAA SWEET 16 victory against Arizona Scheyer called “one of the best championship shows that you have ever trained or part of it.”
The coherent play is the distinctive feature of the Devils Blue Devils team, the only rank in Kenpom for the efficiency of the modified attack and defensive.
I have offered ways to improve Flagg in the first and perhaps only college season, where he learned the “level of details” required to flourish. It was ensuring that he entered the recovery sessions before practice. Or listening when transferring postgraduate studies Mason Gillis And young Teres Protector The importance of sleep, which prompted FLAGG to Nix usually in high school from the late night scrolling.
“As far as external expectations, I couldn’t really care,” Flage said. “For me, it comes to following the expectations of my teammates, coaches, my family. Everyone’s human being, so I will make mistakes. I will not be in my best all the time.
“But this is what the great teammates and the great coaches do for you. They always have my back and always for me.”
Support on hand
His mother, Kelly, almost envy how her son deals with that.
“I think he sees it, but it is in fact not letting it disturb him,” she told AP. “I hope to be more than that. He is very comfortable with who he is, and he has always been so. For this reason he is not easily shook, because he believes himself and does not really care about what others think.
“This is a special ability to be able to take out noise when the noise is sometimes overwhelming for a person like him. I’m really proud of him because he is able to do this.”
She and her husband Ralph watched closely how he was doing after moving to North Carolina for this year while ACE, the twin brother of Cooper, completes his last season of high school basketball in Greensburo, an hour away. Flagg said it helped to close the family, including when he visited a few days on Christmas and got several days in the gym with his father and brothers.
“When you are able to retreat and take a break, it may be really good to completely put your mind and a kind of re -focus,” he said.
This appeared in court, especially since he raised his registration (20.1 points, an increase from 16.9), helps (4.5, from 3.7), and the shooting rate (51 %, an increase of 43.8 %) and 3 points (. 434, from 27.1) after January 1.
In fact, Flagg seems wireless moments when the risks rise, which his mother saw him back to his childhood. There was his hatred for a loss from an early age, such as demanding continuing to play after losing a corridor horse game with Kelly – who played in college in Maine – or a board game like a problem.
He always wanted to be the first to do anything even when it looked a lot, like the family that works with the older brother Hunter to ride a bike without training-just to announce Cooper at the time “I can do this, the mother” and support it.
When it comes to basketball, he tested his parents’ nerves by constantly voiding solid floors at home. But success also came quickly, as whispers are spreading around Men’s mandate about playing laughter several levels in the rows.
“When he was younger, if someone stole a ball from him or his heart, stumbled or did something [wrong]Kelly said: “It was 50/50 shot if it would take a crazy mistake or would have done something amazing. She was the elderly, and it was greater, the chances of something good were about to happen,” Kelly said.
Taste this moment
Note Flagg several times how much Duke enjoyed. He talked about making contacts and suitable for other students who called it “the elite in their aspects.”
It has been offered a rest from the spotlight, even as it appears in advertisements and commercial advertisements as a leading university basketball star with the permitted players to benefit from their sports fame. He is now accustomed to signing requests and personal photos, and ignoring that “there may be worse problems.”
Flagg has avoided saying that he is expected to the American Professional League after the season. Currently, there are more urgent things to deal with, from the four final to the water pistol request.
“I have to do so,” I insisted Flag. “What will I do? I will be unarmed?”
Report by Associated Press.
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