It was great seeing Hubert Davis pick Duke. That must have annoyed him to no end, and especially after the game having to listen to Bilas and Vitale talk about them. At least we kept the title in the ACC. And it wasn't Maryland winning it.
Seriously? What game are you watching? What I saw was NO fouls being called on either team. I saw no less than 8 fouls not called on Butler, many were very very obvious, directly under the basket. I watched Butler come away with an offensive rebound where the player came COMPLETELY over the back of a dookie. Once again, for all you haters, Duke APPEARS to get calls because they are very fundamentally sound in their game. The complete Irony is that is also true of Butler. This was by far one of the best Championship games I have ever seen. I was pulling for Duke, but like I have mentioned, would have been just as happy had Butler won it. That Butler club is really special. I havent heard any praise for the coach all season, and that is unfortunate. He matched perhaps the very best coach in NCAA history play for play, approach for approach and I preparation for preparation. Duke won, but if this was a 3 out of 5 tourney, I am not sure they would have.
I have never seen the focus after a championship game be so much on the losing team as I saw today. The only time Duke was mentioned by anyone was to comment on how no one wanted them to win and generally just why people like to hate them. This team went undefeated at home. Their only bad loss on the road was against NC State. They got blown out by Georgetown. But it was at their place and they were a streaky team that was playing really well at the time. And this was before Zoubek had emerged. And we lost close games to good Wisconsin and Maryland teams. Aside from that we handled our business. IIRC, we beat the most teams ranked in the top 100 RPI of any team in the country. We won our conference regular season and postseason title and obviously got through the NCAA tourny by beating some pretty tough teams. Yet none of that was mentioned today. And very little was mentioned of Coach K tying Adolph Rump for 2nd all time in NCAA championships. I hope Coach K uses this stuff to motivate the team next year so that we can keep winning and getting on the nerves of people who for some reason can't respect kids who work hard and actually get something from their time on campus on the court and in the classroom, all the while winning at a higher rate than everyone else.
Not to take anything away from them because they won all their games and they can't help what happens outside their team, or who they play, but they did have some breaks. Arkansas Pine-Bluff, California, injured Purdue, Baylor, injured WVU, Butler; not the hardest schedule imaginable. It reminds me a little of the Jets run, and when I thought about that a scary thought came to mind. Duke and the Jets came close to both winning the championship in the same season.
