NCAA Basketball Tournament: The Final Four : The Final Nobody Expected : Carlesimo Shows Duke That Seton Hall Is the King, 95-78

Seton Hall played its first Final Four game near the shores of Puget Sound Saturday, and started sinking like a rock.

P.J. Carlesimo took off his jacket. It was going to be a long one.

Danny Ferry was displaying all the storied savvy that has marked his Duke career--the same ability that got the Blue Devils to the Final Four three times in four years. The Seton Hall Pirates were looking like newcomers.

Before the game was 12 minutes old, Seton Hall was down 18 points. But there was to be no Ferry-tale ending, and the Pirates pulled a stunning 35-point turnaround for a 95-78 victory over Duke in a National Collegiate Athletic Assn. semifinal Saturday at the Kingdome in front of 39,187.

Picked to finish seventh in the Big East Conference, Seton Hall now can do no worse than second in the country. The Pirates will play Michigan here Monday for the national championship.

The turnaround against Duke may surpass that of Carlesimo, whose first team at Seton Hall went 6-23 in 1983. Now Seton Hall is 31-6.

“I’ll be honest with you,” said Seton Hall’s Michael Cooper. “There was not one time I didn’t believe we would come back. The coaches kept saying, ‘Let’s go.’ No one panicked. No one tried to win it by himself. We were just cohesive.”

The Pirates ended Ferry’s career and Quin Snyder’s Seattle homecoming two days early.

“I was tired at the very end,” said Ferry, who finished with 34. “But I would have played longer. I wish we could have played 20 more minutes to have a shot to win. . . . The thing I’ll remember more than anything else is the year we had, and these four years. You couldn’t ask for more.”

But he could hope for it. That national championship will never come now, not for Ferry or the other Duke seniors.

Snyder’s homecoming ended with 3:39 left in the game when he committed his fifth foul with his team trailing by 15. He had made only three of 10 shots.

What was left unstated was the success that eluded Snyder, Ferry and John Smith. Three Final Fours in four years. But no championships.

“That doesn’t make it easier to end with this,” Snyder said. “It’s an empty feeling and it’s hard to accept.”

For Seton Hall, it is not yet time to accept.

“You’ve got second place,” Carlesimo told them afterward. “But we can’t be satisfied with that.”

Seton Hall could not be satisfied with how it began this game, missing nine of its first 11 shots.

Despite Darryl Walker’s persistent defense, Ferry scored 21 points in the first half. In fact, before Seton Hall was used to the cavernous Kingdome, Duke led 26-8.

“I was in his face when he got the ball all day,” Walker said. “But I guess I’ll be satisfied with the win. He got 34 points, but I’m satisfied. He’s the best I’ve defended.”

Seton Hall did not get its first field goal until four minutes were gone, and didn’t make itssecond until more than eight had passed.

As Ferry would put it later, in a quiet steady voice, “When you’re up by 18, you have to be fairly confident.”

As Carlesimo would say: “It looked like they were going to blow us out of here.”

Down by 18 after little more than 11 minutes, Seton Hall’s chances seemed shot.

But then Seton Hall’s Ramon Ramos, ineffective much of the first half, grabbed an offensive rebound and turned it into a three-point play.

Walker made a steal off the press, and quickly popped a short jumper, and the lead was down to 13.

Later, with three minutes left in the half, Gerald Greene made a three-pointer. So did Nick Katsikis, off the bench. The lead was five. Time out, Duke. At halftime, Duke led by only five, 38-33.

Carlesimo, who had dumped his jacket early in the game, spoke to his players at halftime.

“He said we had to do the little things,” Anthony Avent said. “But the main thing we had to do was calm down.”

They did.

Duke, playing with unusual player combinations because of a thigh injury to Robert Brickey in the early minutes of the game, and later because freshman center Christian Laettner’s was in foul trouble, began to struggle offensively.

Seton Hall began to close the lead, and took the lead at 50-49 on Cooper’s fast-break layup.

Ferry would turn cold, in part because of the defense of Walker and Frantz Volcy, in part because, he began to rush his shots as his third and final Final Four began to slip away.

He missed a three-point shot and then a layup. He missed six of seven shots. And Seton Hall, hitting 22 of 31 shots in the second half, began to pull away.

At 67-61, Snyder tried an ill-advised three-point shot, and missed badly. Then Andrew Gaze, the Pirates’ Australian scoring machine who had scored only four points in the first half--and missed five three-point attempts--showed him how it was done, making his first three.

Snyder tried again and hit, cutting the lead back to 70-64.

And Gaze put another three pointer back in his face. It was 73-64, and for Duke, it was not to be. Gaze would score 20 points, Walker 19 and point guard Gerald Greene 17.

By the time the score was 81-68, Seton Hall, Ferry’s savvy was shrinking.

In frustration, he turned to official Larry Lembo, wanting a call.

“What about the foul?”

What about it?

Gaze turned to Lembo to set the record straight, as he saw it.

“He didn’t get fouled. There was no foul.”

The winner’s word stood.

Duke’s Coach Mike Krzyzewski says he will not be unfulfilled if he never wins the Final Four.

“I thought our team was as ready to play as we could be, and we played an outstanding team,” Krzyzewski said. “Then fouls, injuries and all that got us out of our rhythm. But the main thing that got us out of our rhythm was Seton Hall’s defense. They were outstanding.”

But for Krzyzewski, it was more difficult to bid this class goodby.

They don’t have another chance.