RALEIGH — Some may have worried that letting Jeremy Roach walk last offseason would come back to bite the Blue Devils. It’s hard to replace a four-year starter, they might have said, especially one with a track record of coming up big for Duke in March.

Those worries seem foolish in hindsight. In fact, the opposite was true Sunday at the Lenovo Center: The Blue Devils came back to bite Roach and his team.

Despite some early jitters, No. 1-seed Duke ended No. 9-seed Baylor’s season with a relatively comfortable 89-66 Round of 32 win, a game defined by the mismatch in each team’s guard rooms, the Blue Devils’ overwhelming size and stellar shooting beyond the arc and from the foul line. 

The win, its 12th in a row and 33rd this season, secures Duke’s place in the last 16 of the NCAA Tournament, the second straight year the Blue Devils have reached the second weekend under head coach Jon Scheyer.

Graduate guard Sion James said at a Saturday media availability that Duke’s size was going to be a big factor in negating the effects of Baylor’s athleticism — particularly its dynamic freshman guard duo of Robert Wright III and V.J. Edgecombe. And while James was correct, it wasn’t as foolproof a strategy as he or the Blue Devils would have liked.

Although Baylor was one of the more undersized teams Duke (33-3) has played this season, the Bears made the Blue Devils scrape for every board and caused a surprising amount of discomfort in the post. Baylor (and former Miami) center Norchad Omier found repeated success in the opening minutes with reverse layups under the basket, minimizing the height deficit with Khaman Maluach and Cooper Flagg. 

Until Roach hit a 3-pointer with just over five minutes played to hand Baylor (20-15) its first lead at 9-8, all of the Bears’ points came from Omier down low. As the half wore on, Omier’s offensive rebounding and kick-out passing handed Baylor ample opportunities to hurt Duke from beyond the arc.

The problem for the Bears was that the Blue Devils outpaced them from behind the arc and were far better at getting to the free-throw line.

Tyrese Proctor, fresh off a record-tying six-3-pointer performance Friday against Mount St. Mary’s, opened the Blue Devils’ scoring with a wide-open look off a fast break before he and Kon Knueppel each added another. Flagg was the source of Duke’s offense everywhere else, making seven charity shots en route to 18 total points as Baylor unsuccessfully switched defensive assignments throughout the game to cover him.

Edgecombe was forced to the bench with his second foul of the first half with just under eight minutes to play, and without him, the Bears’ ability to prevent the Blue Devils from driving inside suffered. That was made even more true as Baylor picked up its seventh foul of the half with 7:35 to play, handing Duke a lengthy date with the bonus.

James and Flagg found success in this new game state right away. The former took a bee-line to the bucket for a vicious two-handed slam to reestablish a 23-21 lead that had Proctor with a scowl as he jogged back on defense. The latter forced more free throws, negating a Langston Love 3-pointer, before Proctor sank a three of his own to make it 28-24.

After Love’s three, the Bears went almost four minutes without another point, allowing the Blue Devils to build a healthy 33-24 lead that endured for the rest of the game. Baylor would bag another six points before halftime, but Duke added 19 — including an ear-shattering dunk from Flagg after a Baylor flagrant foul and a buzzer-beating floater from Caleb Foster — to take a 47-30 lead into the locker room. 

Duke’s 65% field-goal rate and 50% 3-point clip in the first half were both its highest of the season, despite taking 14 fewer shots than Baylor.

That buffer allowed the second half to effectively become processional for the de-facto home team. Duke and Baylor, to the delight of the former and chagrin of the latter, settled into a back-and-forth rhythm, with the Blue Devils able to answer every salvo the Bears fired at them.

Clever work in the post by Omier was negated by equally clever drives by James, Flagg and Knueppel. A Proctor fadeaway near the free-throw line sobered the small Baylor contingent in the arena buzzing after a tough Edgecombe three, as did a swarming two-handed block by Maluach on a Roach layup attempt. Omier’s fourth foul and Wright’s third further stunted the Bears, whose necessarily cautious play let Duke’s size and physicality take control — exactly as intended.

One final, unanswerable volley came in the final minutes before Proctor subbed out to a hero’s applause. The Australian drilled four stepback 3-pointers, each more ridiculous than the last, to shoot his team up by 23, setting a new personal record for threes in a game (seven) in the process.

The Blue Devils have five days of rest before heading to Newark, N.J., to take on the winner of Sunday evening’s matchup between No. 5-seed Oregon and No. 4-seed Arizona in the Sweet 16.

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Andrew Long | Recruitment/Social ChairAndrew Long is a Trinity senior and recruitment/social chair of The Chronicle’s 120th volume. He was previously sports editor for Volume 119.