Cooper Flagg was extremely sweaty during Saturday’s college basketball game between Duke and Clemson. He usually is.
It played a factor in the outcome on Saturday night, as it did earlier in the year.
The presumptive No. 1 overall pick slipped and fell during a crucial moment of the Blue Devils’ upset loss. Flagg turned the ball over to the Tigers with a two-point lead on a travel. There were only 14.7 seconds left in the game. Duke never recovered.
cooper flagg slip pic.twitter.com/W3S3O3uGyI
— ◇ (@H00DH3R0) February 9, 2025
Security guards were in place to try and prevent a court storm but they rendered entirely ineffective against Clemson students. Absolute scenes proceeded to unfold in South Carolina.
#Clemson upsets No. 2 Duke in what will go down as the most significant win in Littlejohn in recent memory.
— Grayson Mann (@gray_mann21) February 9, 2025
Here’s the scene on the home floor: @ClemsonTigerNet pic.twitter.com/9OFrJQtCc2
Here is how it looked on the broadcast:
CLEMSON TAKES DOWN NO. 2 DUKE 😤 pic.twitter.com/y5eDllPfud
— ESPN (@espn) February 9, 2025
We obviously cannot confirm that it was in fact Cooper Flagg who sweat in that exact spot where his foot slipped out from under him. However, we also can’t not.
He just slipped. It was a wet spot.
— Duke head coach Jon Scheyer
The likely National Player of the Year (if not Johni Broome?) is a remarkably sweaty dude as soon as the ball is tipped, if not before.
This is Cooper Flagg. He’s one of the best players in America and is virtually unstoppable. The downside, he sweats uncontrollably leading to late game turnovers pic.twitter.com/Jr5rgG24QU
— Max Hofmeyer (@hoffy8121) February 9, 2025
Second-ranked Duke took its third loss of the year to Clemson and all three losses involved some kind of slip or slip-like situation. Scheyer said after the game on Saturday that he liked the look for Cooper Flagg. The Blue Devils got him an iso. He just slipped.
The Tigers ended the nation’s longest winning streak at 16 games on the same day that Auburn lost to Florida. Both No. 1 and No. 2 went down in a span of a few hours. College basketball is unpredictable this year. Even the seemingly unbeatable are, as we saw, beatable.
So long as everything goes on without incident, court storming is great for the sport. There have been quite a few during the 2024/2025 season. The latest came to an end with Cooper Flagg and his (second?) sweaty slip.