The 2019 Final Four is set after a memorable Elite Eight

Duke never got better.

They peaked, quite literally, on the first day of the season, a 118-84 beatdown of then-No. 2 Kentucky that many of us, myself included, just could not get out of our heads.

That team was the best team in the country on that day, and there isn’t a soul on the planet that would argue that fact rationally. But the reason that a roster featuring Zion Williamson, R.J. Barrett, Cam Reddish and Tre Jones got bounced in the Elite Eight — after they should have been bounced in the second round and could have been bounced in the Sweet 16 — is because the team they were that day is the team they were on Sunday, when Michigan State sent them back to Durham, 68-67.

Duke never got better.

College basketball caught up.

It’s not the first time that head coach Mike Krzyzewski has struggled to find a way to make a roster full of uber-talented freshmen work. Early exits from the NCAA tournament have become fairly common for the Blue Devils, but I’ll stop short of criticizing the man for losing by one point to the team that won both the regular season and tournament titles in the toughest conference in the country. It’s the same reason I refused to criticize Duke for failing to get to the Final Four last year, when Grayson Allen’s game-winning jumper pulled an Aubrey Dawkins and rolled off the wrong side of the rim.

In a one-game knockout events, the margins really are that fine.

That said, Coach K is not beyond reproach for the way that he managed this team and this season.

I will go to my grave saying that the best lineup that Duke could have put out on the floor featured Zion Williamson at the five. He can protect the rim. He’s not going to get beaten on the block by many, if any, college bigs. He’s a terrific defensive rebounder that can grab-and-go with the best of them. Would that have put him at risk of getting into foul trouble? Probably. Would he have worn down more quickly playing the five? Maybe. But it is frustrating that we didn’t end up getting more of Williamson at the five.

And, frankly, there is a reason for that.

Duke’s perimeter options never showed up the way Duke needed them to. the 0-for-10 performance that Jack White posted against Syracuse damaged his confidence so badly that he wouldn’t hit another three for nearly seven weeks, and he was the guy that could have made a difference. He was big enough to help shoulder the load in the paint. He could protect the rim. He was a better perimeter defender than some folks realize. And, in theory, he could shoot. His regression was another part of the long-term problem for this group.

And if we’re being honest, “in theory, he could shoot” is more or less a perfect way to sum up everyone on this Duke team.

Because the whole they-can’t-make-threes conundrum never went away. Duke finished the season 327th nationally in three-point percentage. Cam Reddish, who frustrated everyone until the final seconds of the season, ended the year with a lower three-point percentage than Williamson. R.J. Barrett ended the year shooting 30.8 percent, which was significantly higher than either White or Tre Jones shot. Their best shooter, Alex O’Connell, wasn’t strong enough with the ball or good enough defensively to earn consistent minutes. For him to see the court, one of the star freshmen had to sit or Duke had to roll with a frontline of Williamson, Barrett and Reddish, and Coach K wasn’t having that.

Perhaps the biggest indictment was that Williamson, once again, went the final three possessions without getting a shot off. It’s the same thing that happened in the loss to Gonzaga in the Maui Invitational.

Like I said, Duke never got better.

It wasn’t all bad for Coach K.

For the majority of the year, he actually schemed up some pretty good sets to create just enough space to allow Barrett and Williamson to get downhill going left. He won a couple of games by the timely switching of defenses. He had everyone in the program on the same page, playing together and playing hard and caring about each other. In the one-and-done era, that’s not the easiest thing to do.

But this season will be remembered for the fact that Duke never figured out an answer to their flaws.

And they never changed the things that needed changing.

That, unfortunately, falls on Coach K.

It’s almost too perfect that the man — yes, man — that ended Zion Williamson’s college career is a fifth-year senior that started out his career as a walk-on.

Hell, Kenny Goins almost didn’t end up at Michigan State because the Spartans didn’t have a scholarship to give him initially. The Troy, Mi., native and lifelong Spartan fan was a good high school basketball player, but one that looked like a better fit at one of the directional Michigans as opposed to UM or MSU.

Even when Goins was offered a spot as a preferred walk-on, he struggled with the decision of whether or not to play his college ball in East Lansing. Goins’ mother had mounting medical bills, and the weight of a full tuition was not something that he wanted to burden his family with.

“My dad, I remember him saying at one point, ‘Don’t even worry about the money thing,'” Goins told MLive.com of the conversation that finally convinced him to accept the offer that Michigan State made. “‘If that’s what’s holding you back, don’t even worry about that, just pick, and we’ll figure out the money thing after.'”

It didn’t take long for the Spartan coaching staff to figure out that Goins was going to be a contributor to their program. By his second year on campus, he was a scholarship player. By his third year on campus, he was a starter.

But no one — and I mean no one — could have imagined after the first two years that Goins played in East Lansing that, with less than a minute left in a one-point game in the Elite Eight against the No. 1 overall seed, Tom Izzo would draw up a play that would put Goins in a position to fire up a potentially game-winning three.

He did not shoot a single three-pointer as a freshman. He didn’t shoot a single three as a sophomore. He did, however, shoot a combined 62.9 percent from the free throw line in those two seasons. Heading into his redshirt senior year, Goins had attempted all of 15 threes in his career.

That’s changed this season.

Goins is firing up more than four threes a night, banging them home at a 36 percent clip and doing so as the best pound-for-pound rebounder on Michigan State’s roster. He’s become an invaluable cog in Izzo’s lineup, and nothing proves that more than what happened on the final possession of regulation.

As I detailed in the video below, one of the staples of Michigan State’s offense is to have Cassius Winston run off of a back-screen and he initiates an action. This allows the Spartans to move him around the floor as they get the defense chasing him. The counter to this — which they only ran twice against Duke — is for Winston to set a pindown for Goins, which allows them to then get Winston into an open-side ball-screen action with the other big that is on the floor:

The final possession of the game wasn’t even necessarily drawn up for Goins.

One of the options in the set that Michigan State ran is for Goins to shoot that three, but if you watch the play, Winston is in the middle of setting a back-screen for Xavier Tillman when Goins lets that shot go. There was more to that action than what we saw, but we never actually saw it.

That’s because Kenny Goins, the walk-on who didn’t attempt a three until he was in his fourth year in the program, broke off a play with 38 seconds left, down 66-65 in the Elite Eight against the No. 1 overall seed, and buried a three over a player that not 10 minutes early had blocked one of his three-point attempts.

And the fact that it was that player making that play that sent Zion Williamson, R.J. Barrett and the rest of the Blue Devils packing just about sums up March Madness perfectly.

On Selection Sunday, when the NCAA tournament bracket was unveiled for the world to see.

There weren’t many complaints about the bracket itself, but just about everyone seemed to have a problem with the way that Michigan State was bracketed. The Spartans, the Big Ten regular season and tournament champions, were slotted into the No. 2 seed in the East Region, on a collision course with Duke in the Elite Eight.

That was, many believed, completely unfair.

And they were right.

Duke was the No. 1 overall seed and did not deserve to be forced to play the juggernaut that is Tom Izzo’s Spartans for the right to get to the Final Four.

Cassius Winston scored 20 points and added 10 assists in the final game of the Elite Eight on Sunday night as No. 2 seed Michigan State beat No. 1 seed Duke, 68-67, to get to the Final Four.

The winning bucket came courtesy of Kenny Goins, a fifth-year senior and former walk-on that entered the year having shot just 15 threes in his career. With 43 seconds left, Tom Izzo called a timeout, down 66-65, and drew up a play to get Goins coming off of a pindown for a three.

And he buried it:

The Spartans won despite giving up 24 points and 14 boards to Zion Williamson. This is just the second win against Mike Krzyzewski that Tom Izzo has landed in his illustrious coaching career.

It might also go down as his most memorable win that did not come in a national title game.

This Duke team was a juggernaut all season long, a group that had the eyes of everyone thanks to the biggest brand we’ve ever seen come through the collegiate ranks in Williamson. They were the No. 1 overall seed. They were the favorite to win the national title everywhere after their 118-84 humiliation of Kentucky on the first day of the regular season. They will send three players into the top five of the 2019 NBA Draft, and that doesn’t include Tre Jones, who might sneak his way into the back-end of the lottery if all goes well for him.

Duke is and was always going to be the story.

And they came up short of the Final Four thanks to this Michigan Stte team.

Xavier Tillman finished with 19 points and nine boards, doing as good of a job on Williamson as you can do against a player that finished with 24 points and 14 boards.

R.J. Barrett finished with 21 points, six boards and six assists for Duke, who finished the season with a 32-6 record and nothing but an ACC tournament title to show for the season.