In 1992, it was 2.1 seconds for the Final Four. In 1994, it took a little longer -- about six minutes.
Two seasons ago in Philadelphia, of course, the miraculous Grant Hill-to-Christian Laettner buzzer-beater sent Duke, not Kentucky, to the national semifinal -- all in two ticks of the clock.
On Saturday, with 9:34 remaining in the Southeast Regional final in Knoxville, Tenn., the men's basketball team clung to a 46-41 lead over Purdue. When Glenn Robinson drove the lane, Hill committed his fourth personal foul trying to stop him -- and the Blue Devils were facing the prospects of crunch time without their star.
In '92, the Blue Devils didn't collapse -- they came up with one of the greatest plays in college basketball history.
And they didn't fold last Saturday either.
With Hill on the bench, Duke put together perhaps its finest stretch of basketball this season to help close out the Boilermakers and advance to the Final Four for the seventh time in the last nine years.
The Blue Devils combined a suffocating defensive effort on Robinson with superb team offense to increase their lead from five to six points until Hill returned at the 3:52 mark.
Duke stunned everyone by its play without the leadership of its All-American forward, including head coach Mike Krzyzewski, who was not sure how to respond to the precarious situation at first.
"I would have put [Hill back in] in 30 seconds," Krzyzewski said "I would have put him in at any moment. But all of a sudden we started playing beautiful basketball. It was tremendous."
The stretch was undoubtedly the turning point of the game, as the Blue Devils squashed any comeback thoughts Purdue might have had.
The Boilermakers had already slashed an eight-point Blue Devil lead to five when Hill was whistled for the controversial blocking call, attempting to pick up a charge on Robinson. Suddenly momentum had swung in Purdue's favor as the Blue Devils were forced to confront the steaming Boilermakers in crunch time without the services of their star. A wave of fear swept over the Blue Devil faithful.
"I was too scared," Krzyzewski said "I didn't know what the hell to say. Maybe that was good because the people who should of said something apparently did -- it wasn't me."
The Blue Devils would respond without their star, but their fears were heightened initially when Hill left the floor. Robinson, the Naismith Player of the Year, floated a jumper over Antonio Lang to close his team within 46-43 and Purdue appeared poised to overtake the Blue Devils.
Questions abounded for the Hill-less Blue Devils: How could they contain the prolific Robinson without the nation's best defensive player? What would happen to the offense without its floor leader and leading scorer?
In truth, the answer to the former had been established at the game's opening tip, while the latter was exemplary of Duke basketball.
Although Hill's defense was primarily responsible for Robinson's unusually low output, an entire team defensive effort contained the "Big Dog." In particular, Robinson found little success in the paint primarily due to the interior defense of Cherokee Parks.
On Purdue's first possession of the game, Parks demonstrated that the Blue Devils were not going to allow Robinson to go off for a huge outburst -- as he did against Kansas the previous game, scoring 44 points -- when the Duke center swatted Robinson's shot attempt back in the Purdue star's face. The message was sent early.
"That [block] showed Robinson that in that area of the court, it wouldn't just be [Hill] covering -- Cherokee would be there," Krzyzewski said. "[Robinson] didn't go to the bucket. [Parks] was a huge factor and that's why it's team defense."
Thus, Robinson would find little solace in Hill's exit because the versatile Lang was switched onto him and Parks was still entrenched in the lane. After his initial jumper, the frustrated Robinson did not score again during the six-minute stretch as the Duke defense held the entire Purdue team to only nine points until Hill returned.
The offensive answer during the six-minute stretch was Duke's ball distribution.
The Blue Devils had no trouble passing the ball on the perimeter without its floor general, finding open men for easy shots.
The main benefactors of this unselfishness were Parks and Lang, who scored eight of the 10 Blue Devil points during the run -- six on dunks and lay-ins. But all of the Duke players contributed to the scoring output.
"We made more passes and we incorporated more people," Krzyzewski said. "That's what happened during that six-minute run. It was the team scoring."
The Blue Devils' ability to perform in a clutch situation without their star player explains the key to Duke's recent history of success.
"It's not just one guy doing it," Krzyzewski said. "That is a very important part as to why we've gone [to the Final Four] seven out of the last nine years."
As the Blue Devils advance to Charlotte, with championship hopes in the balance, they have already etched one more mark into Duke basketball lore.
And this was a mark that took about six minutes long to make.
"That's one of the neat things that has happened to me in coaching -- those six minutes," Krzyzewski said. "To me whether we win the championship or not, I won't reflect on one shot as much as I will those six minutes."
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