Virginia Tech's Ahmed Hill's miss at the buzzer against Duke.

The top-seeded Duke Blue Devils are moving on to the Elite Eight after a 75-73 win over the fourth-seeded Virginia Tech Hokies Friday night, but barely. Similar to their last-second win over UCF in the previous round, the Blue Devils narrowly pulled this out, and blown chances from the other team were again part of that. Virginia Tech led at the half and had two late chances to go up on three-pointers, missing both, and then got a final chance to tie it with Ahmed Hill missing an open (but tough) shot at the rim after a great inbounds play (seen above). Here’s that final play:

And here’s the first three:

And the second one, which came after Virginia Tech recovered the rebound off the first one and called timeout. (There was some question about if the Hokies’ player involved was out of bounds, but that wasn’t reviewable.) It led to another miss:

But Virginia Tech got one more chance to at least push this to overtime, and perhaps their best chance of the three. However, Hill couldn’t convert that, and it was Duke moving on. The Blue Devils will face Michigan State in the Elite Eight Sunday.

[Clippit]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.