Anepic college basketball battle had ended with Duke claiming a 69-64 win over Kansas. The BlueDevils (29-4) advanced to play in the Sweet 16 of the NCAATournament. Kansas (24-10) headed for home.

“It’s a shame that only one kid, one team, one coach can feel great at the end, but that’s the way it is,” a tearful Roy Williams said after his Jayhawks landed just short of an upset. “You had kids out there playing as hard as they possibly could on both sides. He (Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski) feels a lot better than I do because this is NCAATournament play.”

“I feel great about advancing, but just take this game as a singular entity and you feel good,”Krzyzewski said. “Every kid and coach that was in this game knew it was a great game. You feel good about being in it. Because you won you feel a little bit better.”

Kansas rallied to a 59-all tie when guard Jeff Boschee drained a 3-pointer to cap a 9-0 run with 3:30 left to play. The No. 8 seed in the East Regional then took a one-point lead with 1:18 to go when Nick Bradford picked up a loose ball in the paint, hit a layup and converted the free throw for a three-point play.

On a weekend that saw two No. 1 seeds exit the tournament, the Blue Devils kept their calm. Four overtime wins in the regular season helped.

“We felt right at home at the end,”junior Shane Battier said. “Nate James said in the huddle, ‘We’ve been in this situation before, let’s go out there and do the things we’ve done over and over again this year and win the ball game.’”

The Blue Devils turned to senior Chris Carrawell, who missed a shot that freshman Carlos Boozer tipped in for a 65-64 lead with 53.5 seconds to go.

After a Kansas timeout, Nick Bradford tried to pass to teammate Nick Collison, but Boozer stepped in for a steal. After two Carrawell free throws, the Jayhawks’ upset bid ended when Kirk Hinrich’s 3-pointer hit the front of the rim with 10 seconds to play. The shot was right on target.

Just short.

“I saw Jeff (Boschee) went up for the shot and it was contested, so I called, ‘Jeff, Jeff!’ and he passed me the ball,”said the freshman Hinrich, who had made three of his first four 3-point attempts. “It was a great look. I thought it was going in. You just don’t know how badly I wanted to hit the shot for all of my teammates.”

Carrawell chased down the rebound in the corner and called timeout, then Duke freshman JasonWilliams drained two free throws with 2.2 seconds to go for the final five-point margin.

“Playing against a team like that in this round is like playing a regional championship game,”Krzyzewski said. “The level of play out there today, effort-wise, was regional championship/FinalFour. The reason was a high level of talent and kids motivated to win. This was just a high-caliber game from the get-go.”

Kansas got going early and had Duke on the ropes. Hinrich nailed three 3-pointers in the first six minutes to put the Jayhawks up 13-4. The Blue Devils hit just one of their first 15 shots from the field and turned the ball over six times.

Better defense and more trips to the free-throw line pulled the Blue Devils even. Duke connected on 12 of 14 attempts in the first half, while Kansas went to the foul line only four times. When Carrawell hit a long pull-up jumper at the first-half buzzer, Duke had a 35-all tie.

“You have to find different ways of scoring, and our kids found going to the free-throw line and we got offensive boards,” Krzyzewski said. “We kind of mucked it out.”