Cameron Boozer silenced any lingering doubts when Duke needed it most

Cameron Boozer is all but a lock to become the fifth freshman to be named the Naismith National Player of the Year in men’s basketball and the third Duke Blue Devil. However, after a nervy first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, there were plenty of lingering doubts about whether the freshman forward belonged in the same conversation as Cooper Flagg and Zion Williamson. 

Boozer’s highlight reel is never going to measure up to those other Blue Devils legends. He’s not the quickest or the fastest, he doesn’t jump the highest, but Boozer’s superpower was on full display in the second half of Duke’s 80-75 Sweet 16 win over St. John’s in Washington, D.C., on Friday night. 

While he’s not the elite athlete Duke’s other one-and-done stars have been, Boozer plays just how you’d think the son of a national champion and an NBA all-star would. Even as a 6-foot-9 forward, Boozer is the best decision-maker on the floor, always processing the game a step ahead of everyone else on the floor, and with the season hanging in the balance, Jon Scheyer put the ball in his hands and let him do just that. 

Jon Scheyer game on Cameron Boozer’s shoulders, and that's never a bad idea

Caleb Foster’s heroics in his remarkable return from injury have grabbed the headlines, and deservedly so. But Boozer won Duke the game by simply doing what he does every time he takes the floor. 

Riding a hot-shooting first half and a charge out of the break, St. John’s extended its one-point lead at the intermission to nine, five minutes into the second half. Caleb Foster’s seven-point surge brought it back to five at the 12:34 mark. Then, it was Cameron Boozer time. 

After Foster’s trip to the free throw line, which came courtesy of a pick-and-roll with Boozer and made it 57-52 St. John’s, the five-star freshman was involved in the primary action on 13 of Duke’s next 14 possessions. That stretch covered 10 minutes and 20 seconds of game clock and produced 23 points. That’s 1.77 points per possession, against a half-court defense that forced opponents to shoot 38.7 percent, including nine points of Boozer’s 22 points, and one assist of his three assists, though it easily could have been more with a more friendly scorekeeper. 

Boozer was a killer out of the short-roll with Foster, getting downhill to attack the rim when he had leverage, but he was even better as the initiator with Duke leaning on inverted pick-and-pops with Boozer as the ball-handler and Isaiah Evans setting the screen. Duke ran the former on four straight possessions and the latter four more times down the stretch.

Nearly every time, it led to points. Sometimes directly from Boozer, others from Evans' impressive shot-making, but always because Boozer found the right matchup and put the ball in the right place. He attacked when he should have, he gave it up when at the right time, and then, on a few stalled possessions, he bailed Duke out with a bucket in isolation. 

When you say the word maestro in a basketball context, the image of a John Stockton-like point guard (or Bobby Hurley for Duke fans) is typically what the mind conjures. But that’s Cameron Boozer. He was a pressure-release valve for his guards against St. John’s pressure, a scorer when the offense bogged down, and in the tensest moments in the second half, Scheyer put the ball in his hands and tasked him to make every decision because he knew they would all be right.