They were the five most intoxicating words of the NCAA tournament’s opening weekend. “The blueprint for beating Duke.” They stemmed from the Blue Devils’ second-round escape of UCF. And for 24 hours thereafter, amid chalk dust everywhere, they were unavoidable.

First came the takes. We pushed the “blueprint” narrative. Others did as well. Sure enough, in due course, the counter-takes arrived with equal force.

The debate, though, has been overly simplistic. The “blueprint” hasn’t even been defined or explained in detail. As the Blue Devils march into Washington, D.C., for a Sweet 16 matchup with Virginia Tech on Friday, it’s worth investigating what exactly UCF did that put it in position to nearly pull off the upset of the tournament, and whether it really is a roadmap for others.

To be considered a blueprint, three things must be true about the Knights’ approach. First of all, it – and not merely luck or streaky shooting – had to be a primary reason UCF came oh-so close. Second, it had to be novel – something that hadn’t already been piloted by ACC foes. And third, it has to be duplicable – in other words, not Tacko-dependent.

View photos Zion Williamson was awesome, but Duke, as a team, struggled in the second half against UCF. (AP) More

Why UCF’s Duke-stopping strategy was novel

The novelty of UCF’s strategy was degree and method, not philosophy or intent. Everybody knows Duke can’t shoot. Opponents have spent all season packing the paint. But UCF head coach Johnny Dawkins, a former Coach K pupil, took those tenets to extremes nobody else had dared entertain.

For much of the second half, Dawkins put his big man – either Tacko Fall or Chad Brown – on Duke’s jumpshot-lacking point guard – either Tre Jones or Jordan Goldwire. But the big was only “on” Jones or Goldwire in an Andrew Bogut-on-Tony Allen sense:

View photos (Screen shot: CBS | Illustration: Henry Bushnell/Yahoo Sports) More

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Jones is a 23 percent 3-point shooter. Goldwire has made three of his 25 attempts all season. Other coaches have conceded threes to them. None has so explicitly dared them. UCF guard Terrell Allen even seemed to be taunting Goldwire on one play:

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This was an innovative ploy. It went beyond the norm. And it worked.

The numbers behind UCF’s Duke ‘blueprint’

Hold on, you might say. Duke shot 40 percent from deep. That’s its best shooting performance since early-February. How, then, did the strategy “work”?

Ah, but here’s where nuance matters. Duke did indeed make 10 of its 25 3-pointers. But eight of those 10 came from Zion Williamson, R.J. Barrett and Cam Reddish. (And five of those eight came in the first half.) Jones and Goldwire went a combined 2 for 11, with eight of the 11 attempts after halftime.

Dawkins went to the full version of the center-on-point guard scheme with a little over 15 minutes remaining in the second half – at the under-16 TV timeout, when Duke led 51-45, to be exact. In the first half, the Knights had alternated between a more traditional man-to-man and a zone. It yielded an eight-point deficit. But after intermission, UCF was plus-7. Duke’s half-by-half shooting splits tell the story:

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