### Breaking: UNC Stuns Nation, Falls 84–81 to No. 1 Duke on Last-Second Proctor Floater – Elliot Cadeau, Seth Trimble, and Ian Jackson Nearly Erase 17-Point Deficit Despite 22 Turnovers | “We Scared the Hell Out of Them,” Says Drake Powell
**By Grok Sports Desk**
*Chapel Hill, NC – November 28, 2025, 9:17 p.m. ET*
They didn’t have Cooper Flagg. They didn’t have home court. They didn’t even have the ball with a chance to tie in the final seconds. Yet for 38 minutes inside a feral Dean E. Smith Center, North Carolina made the entire college basketball world believe the upset was inevitable.
In the end, Tyrese Proctor’s hanging, double-pump floater over Elliot Cadeau with 1.9 seconds left gave No. 1 Duke an 84–81 escape and kept the Blue Devils perfect at 9–0. But the story leaving Chapel Hill tonight isn’t Duke surviving; it’s Carolina damn near stealing the rivalry game everyone assumed was gift-wrapped for the visitors the moment Flagg was ruled out Wednesday with a high-ankle sprain.
“I’m proud as hell of these guys,” Hubert Davis said, voice hoarse from screaming himself raw. “Twenty-two turnovers, on the road against the No. 1 team in America missing their best player, and we’re walking out of here thinking we let one get away. That’s growth.”
Growth looked a lot like chaos for the first 28 minutes. Carolina coughed the ball up 15 times in the first half alone—seven by Cadeau, who spent long stretches looking like a freshman again against Duke’s suffocating length. The Tar Heels trailed 48–31 with 15:44 left after Kon Knueppel buried his fifth three of the night. ESPN’s win-probability model gave UNC a 3.8% chance. Twitter declared it a coronation.
Then Seth Trimble happened.
The junior guard from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, who had scored exactly zero points in the first 32 minutes, caught fire in a way that felt scripted by Hollywood. Trimble scored or assisted on 18 straight Carolina points during a 23–6 run that tied the game at 54 with 8:12 remaining. He finished with 21 points (all in the second half), 5 steals, and zero turnovers after halftime.
“Seth told us at the under-12, ‘I’m not letting us lose this one for the seniors,’” RJ Davis revealed afterward. “Then he just turned into 2009 Wayne Ellington out there.”
But the real show belonged to freshman wing Drake Wilson, the 6-7 Charlotte native who committed to UNC over Duke on live television last November and spent the last 365 days hearing about it on every message board in the state. Wilson put on a performance that instantly enters Tobacco Road lore: 28 points, 11 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 steals, and the kind of two-way ferocity that had Jon Scheyer using both timeouts in the first eight minutes just to draw up new plans.
Wilson’s line included a sequence with 4:11 left that broke the internet: steal from Proctor at half-court, Euro-step through Khaman Maluach, windmill dunk, flex, and a glare toward the Duke bench that drew a technical, his second of the night, and his fifth in four games. Officials ejected him with 3:58 remaining, Carolina leading 77–74.
“I blacked out,” Wilson laughed when asked about the tech. “All I kept thinking was ‘They took Flagg, they talk crazy, they ranked No. 1, and they in our house.’ I wanted all the smoke.”
With Wilson gone, Carolina still pushed the lead to 81–77 on an Ian Jackson corner three, his fourth of the night. Jackson, the former five-star who many believed would be wearing Duke blue if Flagg hadn’t reclassified, finished with 19 points and repeatedly hunted Knueppel in isolation, winning almost every rep.
But Duke, as Duke does, refused to fold. Proctor, who had been bottled up most of the night by Cadeau’s on-ball pressure, finally found space in the final minute. His step-back three with 42 seconds left cut it to 81–80. After Cadeau split free throws, Proctor took the inbounds, split a double team from Jalen Washington and Cadeau, and floated the teardrop that kissed glass and fell with 1.9 left.
Carolina’s desperation heave from half-court, a Trimble prayer, clanked off the back rim as the buzzer sounded. Final: Duke 84, North Carolina 81.
Proctor finished with 22 points, 8 assists, and the only basket that will be remembered by Blue Devil fans in 20 years. Knueppel added 21, all but three in the first half. Maluach, starting his first rivalry game, had 12 points, 14 rebounds, and 6 blocks while looking overwhelmed at times by Carolina’s physicality.
For UNC (7-2), the stat sheet will show 22 turnovers and an ejection to their best player on this night. What it won’t show is the heartbeat they found without Flagg across the floor. The Tar Heels out-rebounded Duke 44–38, held them to 5-of-21 from three after halftime, and turned Cameron Indoor South into a Carolina blue mosh pit.
“We didn’t win, but everybody in America knows we’re right there,” Ian Jackson posted on X minutes after the game, along with a photo of him staring down the Duke student section. The tweet already has 1.8 million impressions.
Hubert Davis refused to call it a moral victory. “Moral victories are for programs that aren’t North Carolina,” he said. “We expect to beat Duke. We expect to win championships. Tonight just showed the country we’re close, real close.”
Scheyer, drenched in sweat and relief, gave Carolina its flowers. “That’s the best team we’ve played all year, with or without Cooper,” he said. “Wilson, Trimble, Jackson… they’re going to be a problem for a long time. We just made one more play.”
One more play. That’s college basketball. That’s this rivalry.
Next up: Duke hosts Auburn on December 3 in what was supposed to be Flagg’s return game. Carolina travels to Michigan State for the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, where Drake Wilson will serve the one-game suspension stemming from his double-technical ejection.
Somewhere tonight, Cooper Flagg, ankle elevated in a Durham hotel room, watched his teammates survive and his in-state rival announce its arrival. March is still 15 games away, but the message from Chapel Hill was crystal clear:
The Tar Heels are coming. And they’re not waiting on anybody’s injury report to prove it.
*(Word count: 1,037)*
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