Duke basketball freshman Kyle Filipowski is setting his goals high entering the NCAA Tournament.
It’s always good to dream big and that’s exactly what Duke basketball freshman Kyle Filipowski is doing.
Minutes after winning the ACC Tournament on Saturday night against Virginia, Filipowski was already eyeing the next challenge for the Blue Devils.
“National Championship,” Filipowski told the ACC Network when asked what was next for this Duke team.
“We’re on a hot streak and that’s been our goal since the beginning of the year and we haven’t lost sight of that.”
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The MVP of the ACC Tournament, and Rookie of the Year in the league, averaged 19.6 points per game in Greensboro while playing a majority of the event on a sprained ankle after rolling it in opening minutes of the quarterfinals against Pittsburgh.
The 7-footer went for 20 points and 10 rebounds in the championship game.
“An ACC Championship was one of our goals as well, but we just have just big goals for this squad and doing it in this one year we have together, we are going to make it special.”
Duke basketball aware of challenge waiting
Duke was given a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament and will have to travel to Orlando, Florida to play No. 12 seed Oral Roberts, a Sweet 16 team from two years ago, in the Round of 64 on Thursday night.
“We were really motivated just because people still really didn’t respect us and they didn’t think we were that good of a team,” Filipowski continued.
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Duke has won nine games in a row entering the NCAA Tournament and are a trendy pick to return to the Final Four for a second straight season.
“We really had to come a long way…we had a chip on our shoulder and we wanted to go out and make a statement and we did that and we still are going to do that in the tournament as well.”
Tipoff is scheduled for 7:10p.m. ET (CBS).