2005-06

Season Overview

The 2005-06 season was supposed to be the coronation. J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams returned as seniors, both All-Americans, both among the most decorated players in program history. The freshmen class added real talent: Josh McRoberts, a 6-10 forward from Indianapolis who could handle the ball like a guard, and Greg Paulus, a point guard who had turned down a scholarship to play quarterback at Notre Dame. Duke was the preseason #1 team in the country. The expectations were a national championship — nothing less.

Redick delivered the greatest individual season in Duke history. He averaged 26.8 points per game, second in the nation behind only Gonzaga’s Adam Morrison, and set records that may never be broken. On February 14, against Wake Forest, he surpassed Virginia’s Curtis Staples to set the NCAA career record for three-pointers made (he would finish with 457). Five days later, he scored 30 against Miami to become Duke’s all-time leading scorer with 2,557 points, passing Dick Groat. On February 25, against Temple, he passed Dickie Hemric’s 51-year-old ACC scoring record of 2,587 points. He had three 40-point games in a single season — unprecedented in the modern ACC. He finished his career with 2,769 points (the most in ACC history at the time, later passed by Tyler Hansbrough), a .912 career free throw percentage (the best in NCAA history among players with 600+ makes), and 964 points in his senior season alone, just six short of Dennis Scott’s ACC single-season record of 970.

Shelden Williams won the NABC National Defensive Player of the Year award for the second consecutive season, becoming only the second player in history to win it twice. He was a first-team AP All-American — the ninth set of Duke teammates to be named AP first-team All-Americans simultaneously, the first since Jason Williams and Shane Battier in 2001. Williams finished his career as Duke’s all-time leader in rebounds and blocked shots, with 59 career double-doubles and one of only three triple-doubles in school history.

The regular season was dominant: 14-2 in the ACC, the regular season championship, and the #1 ranking for most of the year. Duke was never ranked lower than third nationally. The Blue Devils won the NIT Season Tip-Off and rolled through the conference schedule with the kind of authority that suggested a deep March run. But there were cracks.

The first came at Chapel Hill on February 8, when Duke beat UNC 87-83 behind 35 points from Redick. He was unconscious — hitting shots from everywhere, torching the Carolina backcourt of Bobby Frasor and Wes Miller. It was the kind of performance that made everyone watching think the championship was inevitable.

The second crack came on Senior Night at Cameron Indoor Stadium on March 4 — and this time it was a fracture. Duke was 27-2, ranked #1, honoring Redick, Williams, Sean Dockery, and Lee Melchionni in what was expected to be a coronation. North Carolina was the 13th-ranked team, a freshmen-heavy squad that had lost its seven leading scorers from the 2005 national championship team. Sports Illustrated hadn’t even put them in the projected NCAA Tournament field in the preseason.

It became the most-watched college basketball game in ESPN history.

Redick hit four of his first five shots and Duke jumped to a 13-2 lead. Then freshman Marcus Ginyard checked in and spent the rest of the game harassing Redick, who missed 15 of his final 16 shots and finished 5-of-21. Meanwhile, freshman Tyler Hansbrough — playing against Shelden Williams, the two-time National Defensive Player of the Year — scored 27 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. Carolina broke a 59-59 tie with an 11-0 run over three and a half minutes. Danny Green came up with a key defensive stop on Sean Dockery’s floater in the final minute. Bobby Frasor and Hansbrough nailed six straight free throws to ice it: UNC 83, Duke 76. The most telling stat: Carolina’s four freshmen scored 55 points. Duke’s four senior starters scored 51.

Roy Williams told his team before the game: “I hope it isn’t cockiness, but I told them that I thought we were the only team in the country that could come in here and win this game.” Hansbrough said afterward: “When I knocked down those free throws, it hit me that we’d just come in here and beat Duke. It doesn’t get any better than this.” It was UNC’s first win at Cameron since 2001. It was the first of four wins Hansbrough’s teams would record in Durham — he never lost at Cameron Indoor Stadium in his career.

Duke regrouped for the ACC Tournament in Greensboro. The championship game against Boston College was K’s 1,000th career game as a head coach, and he celebrated it with a 78-76 victory. Redick hit a three to tie with 1:53 left, then another with 1:17 remaining to take the lead for good. He won the ACC Tournament MVP for the second consecutive year — only the fourth player in league history to do so — and reclaimed the NCAA three-point record that St. Peter’s Keydren Clark had briefly stolen during the MAAC Tournament. It was K’s 10th ACC Tournament championship.

In the NCAA Tournament, Duke was the #1 seed in the Atlanta Regional. The Blue Devils dispatched Southern 80-55 and George Washington 74-61 to set up a Sweet Sixteen matchup with fourth-seeded LSU.

Then Garrett Temple happened.

LSU coach John Brady designed a game plan around one principle: Temple, a 6-5 guard with long arms and elite athleticism, would chase Redick everywhere. Through every screen. Around every curl. Over every pick. The strategy was the same one Michigan State had used the year before, but Temple executed it with a relentlessness that bordered on artistry. Redick — the #2 scorer in the nation, the consensus National Player of the Year, the greatest shooter in ACC history — shot 3-of-18 from the field and scored 11 points. It was one of the worst performances of his career, and it came in the last game he would ever play at Duke.

LSU won 62-54. Duke’s season ended at 32-4. The record over Redick’s four years was 116-23. He won every major National Player of the Year award: the Wooden, the Naismith, the AP, the USBWA, the NABC, the Rupp, Basketball Times, The Sporting News. He also won the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States — the first Duke player to receive that honor. Williams was the 5th overall pick in the 2006 NBA Draft. Redick was selected 11th by the Orlando Magic.

But the championship never came. In four years at Duke, Redick made it to the Final Four once (2004, lost to UConn), the Sweet Sixteen twice (2005, lost to Michigan State; 2006, lost to LSU), and missed the Sweet Sixteen once (2003, lost to Kansas). For all the individual brilliance — 2,769 points, 457 three-pointers, a .912 free throw percentage, two National Player of the Year awards, four All-America selections — the one thing that eluded him was a ring.

The irony would take eighteen years to ripen. In June 2024, Redick was named head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers — the same franchise that had tried to take Coach K away from Duke the summer before Redick’s sophomore year. Krzyzewski, who stayed at Duke because his heart belonged there, served as an unofficial advisor during the search. Redick, whose career at Duke was saved by K’s decision to stay, was now leading the team K turned down.

Some circles close. This one just took a while.

The scouting report had been written the year before by Michigan State, and refined on Senior Night by Marcus Ginyard. If you could get a long, athletic defender to chase J.J. Redick through every screen — fight over every pick, deny every catch, contest every curl — you could take him out of a game. The problem was that almost nobody had the personnel or the discipline to do it for 40 minutes. In the 2006 Sweet Sixteen, LSU did.

John Brady’s Tigers were a fourth seed with nothing to lose and a defensive identity built around versatile athletes. His weapon was Garrett Temple, a 6-5 sophomore guard with long arms, quick feet, and the kind of relentless motor that turned chasing Redick from a strategy into a personal mission. Temple shadowed Redick everywhere. Through screens. Around picks. Into the corners. Off the ball. The coverage was suffocating.

Redick — the consensus National Player of the Year, the #2 scorer in the nation at 26.8 points per game, the all-time leading scorer in Duke and ACC history — shot 3-of-18 from the field. He scored 11 points. It was one of the worst performances of his career, and it was his last game in a Duke uniform.

The rest of the team couldn’t compensate. Shelden Williams fought for 23 points and 8 rebounds, but the offense was stagnant without Redick’s gravity pulling defenders away from the paint. Josh McRoberts and Greg Paulus, the freshmen who were supposed to provide the depth that last year’s team lacked, couldn’t generate enough offense against LSU’s physical, switching defense. Duke scored 54 points — its lowest total of the season.

LSU won 62-54. It was over.

The post-game scene was quiet. Redick, who had spent four years as the most visible, most polarizing, most scrutinized player in college basketball — a man who received 50 to 75 hate calls per day after opponents discovered his cell phone number, who was called “the most hated current athlete in America” by a CBS Sports columnist, who wrote slam poetry in his spare time and had Bible verses tattooed on his arms — walked off the court for the last time.

His career totals: 2,769 points (ACC record at the time), 457 three-pointers (NCAA record at the time), .912 career free throw percentage (NCAA record for 600+ makes), 964 points in his senior season alone, two National Player of the Year awards, four All-America selections, the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. A 116-23 record over four years. And no championship.

Shelden Williams: Duke’s all-time leader in rebounds and blocked shots. Two-time National Defensive Player of the Year. First-team AP All-American. 59 career double-doubles. The 5th overall pick in the 2006 NBA Draft.

Together, they were the greatest duo of the Coach K era that never won a title. Their numbers hang in the Cameron rafters side by side — #4 and #23 — retired in back-to-back ceremonies in January and February of 2007.

Redick went on to play 15 NBA seasons, became a pioneering podcast host, and in June 2024 was named head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. Williams was drafted 5th overall by the Atlanta Hawks and had a six-year NBA career before moving into basketball operations.

The 2005-06 season was the end of an era in every sense. After Redick and Williams graduated, Duke would field its youngest team in more than 60 years. The Transition was over. What came next would look nothing like what had come before.