March Madness is always a busy time at local sports bars. But this year could take that to a whole new level, courtesy of Maine native Cooper Flagg.
The freshman phenom and his Duke Blue Devils team have already been generating big crowds in Maine bars and restaurants this season. And that was before the added tournament excitement.
“You know when Cooper’s playing, there’s going to be more of a crowd,” said Andy Bush, the manager at Hero’s Sports Grill and Entertainment Center in Bangor.
Bush has noticed a lot more Duke fans as people watch Flagg push the bounds of basketball possibility beyond what any Maine player has accomplished before him.
Flagg has already been named the Atlantic Coast Conference player and rookie of the year. He was selected unanimously to the Associated Press All-America Team and is expected to be the first pick in the NBA draft.
“I’m not a basketball fan, but I love to see a hometown kid do great,” Bush said.
Just down the road from Flagg’s hometown of Newport, folks have been piling into the Somerset Pour House all year long to root for Flagg and the Blue Devils.
General manager Zach Leal said the Palmyra-based business has become a local hub for people to come watch “the local superstar” put on a show throughout the season.
“It’s just been a big bonus for everybody in the community to be able to watch him, come together, and cheer for a local kid,” Leal said. “And it’s made everybody really proud.”
There has been plenty to be proud about. Flagg’s 12 ACC Rookie of the Week honors are more than anyone else in history. He led Duke during the regular season in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks — something that no ACC player had done in 25 years.
Leal explained how the entire area has embraced Flagg as one of their own. Leal attended Nokomis, the same regional high school where Cooper and his brothers Ace and Hunter won a Maine state championship a few years ago.
“The town line to Newport, I can see it. It’s about 100 feet away or so,” the Pour House manager said. “It just brings out everybody from the Newport area. Everybody that watches him, they basically say he’s from here.”
Leal credited Flagg for igniting new interest in college basketball generally, and said that stems from people “being prideful and being just happy for a local kid that actually made it from here” having such a high level of success.
“That’s really all you hear about when you come to Newport or this area,” Leal continued. “You’re going to hear about Cooper the majority of the time.”
Can you blame them? As Flagg’s mom, Kelly Flagg, told the Bangor Daily News earlier this week, he “has sort of broken the mold for what can happen for a kid from Maine.”
From Palmyra to Bangor, bar managers are in agreement: this doesn’t happen every day.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. We don’t have a lot of local athletes that make it to the big time, or even high level Division I college basketball or college sports, period,” Leal said.
Bush, at Hero’s in Bangor, said the energy Flagg is generating is great for the community, “especially for eastern Maine, where we don’t have many kids make it to this level.”
Randy Briggs, general manager at Buffalo Wild Wings in Bangor, said there has been a “huge” increase in the interest surrounding Duke games, but not necessarily from Duke diehard fans.
“You do have your Duke fans out and about, but the ones that are really out watching these games right at the moment are Cooper Flagg fans, not Duke fans,” Briggs noted. “They’re really just trying to support him and watch somebody from Maine go a little bit farther than anybody else has before.”
Duke will play its opening round game of the tournament on Friday at 2:50 p.m. and all three of these managers are expecting good turnouts. Briggs said Duke’s matchup against Mount St. Mary’s will be a featured game at the Bangor Buffalo Wild Wings and that they “expect a pretty good crowd for it.”
Leal said the Somerset Pour House has almost 100 seats, and that Flagg helped fill a lot of them so far this season.
“We do typically end up with a pretty good crowd, more than normal, when the Duke games are on,” he said.
Bush said that Hero’s hasn’t run out of space at Duke regular games, but that consideration has been part of the talk and planning heading into the NCAA tournament.
“Of course, we’re used to a big March Madness crowd, but we are expecting more of a crowd when Duke plays,” Bush said.
“We know that when Duke plays, those are going to be our busiest hours,” he added.
Duke and Flagg fans will have extra reason to cheer this week, with Duke confirming on Thursday that Flagg will in fact suit up for Friday’s matchup against the Mountaineers. Flagg sprained his left ankle in an ACC tournament game last week, and Duke coach Jon Scheyer said Sunday that the goal was for Flagg to play in the opening round game.
“It’s been great to see everybody cheering on Cooper, and seeing what it brings in,” Bush added. “It’s nice to see everybody rally around the hometown hero. Everybody around here is rooting for him.”