The No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament, the Louisville Cardinals, beat No. 2 seed, the Duke Blue Devils, 85-63 Sunday, to advance to the Final Four.
But that wasn’t the story.
In the first quarter, with a little under seven minutes left to play, Louisville guard Kevin Ware suffered one of the worst injuries seen in national television history.
As he was going up for a desperation block on a Duke 3-point attempt, he came down awkwardly and suffered an open fracture of his right leg. His leg twisted and turned in ways so unnatural that it left his teammates holding each other on the bench. The injury was so gruesome that some teammates began to cry, while others comforted each other at half court.
While trainers were preparing to put Ware on a stretcher, he called over his teammates and said six simple words. “Just win if for me y’all,” he said through tears.
After Ware’s inspirational words, the Cardinals went on a run. They shot 59.2 percent from the field in the second half outscoring Duke 50-31.
“We couldn’t lose this game for him, we just couldn’t,” Cardinal Coach Rick Pitino said. “We know how hard it is to beat Duke. If you let Duke shoot and you let Duke get in transition, you’re going to lose. We took those two things away.”
Social media surged last night after the Ware injury with hastag #PRAYFORWARE all over Twitter.
Guard Russ smith recalled the coaching staff’s message at halftime. “Don’t lose this game for Kevin Ware,” they said. They would not.
Star guards Smith and Peyton Siva finished with 23 points and 16 points, respectively. Gorgui Deng chipped in 14 points and 11 rebounds. Duke's Miles Plumlee had 17 points and 12 rebounds in the loss.
Ware had a successful surgery Sunday Night to repair his leg, according to USA Today.
