West Virginia Upsets Duke

By Trashtalk Superstar

Immediately after selecting Duke to beat West Virginia in my NCAA Tournament bracket, I started to wish that I'd picked West Virginia instead. I'd waffled a bit before I picked Duke because I felt certain that West Virginia could (and maybe should) beat the Blue Devils.

But ultimately, I decided that West Virginia had been too inconsistent this year for me to feel especially confident about picking them over Duke. Then I made a major error: I started to project how West Virginia would match up against Duke, position by position. I thought that West Virginia was as good as, or better than Duke at every position except for at the wing. I concluded that Duke's combination of Gerald Henderson and DeMarcus Nelson would be hard for West Virginia to defend, and that the game would likely turn on Duke's advantage in that particular matchup.

On Saturday, West Virginia upset Duke 73-67, and earned a trip to next week's Sweet 16.

DeMarcus Nelson was held to 6 points.

Now I really I wish that I'd just gone ahead and picked West Virginia. I wanted to, but I let myself over think my decision.

Look, for the last two or three years years it's been my contention that Duke has been vastly overrated.

Before last year's NCAA Tournament field was announced, I questioned whether Duke even deserved an NCAA Tournament bid, and I suggested that they probably really belonged in the N.I.T. And I wasn't exactly shocked when Virginia Commonwealth knocked Duke out of the Tournament in the first round.

But I believe that many of the world's ills are directly attributable to mankind's seemingly insatiable thirst for ego-gratification: particularly the kind of ego-gratification that one gets from saying,"I told you so," "I was right and you were wrong," etc. And besides, I didn't think that Duke's loss to VCU was that big of a surprise. So I refrained from commenting on Duke's early exit from the 2007 NCAA Tournament on Drive and Dish. I did, however, take note of ESPN college basketball analyst Dick Vitale's preposterous explanation of Duke's first round Tournament collapse last year . Furthermore, in that archived Drive and Dish post, I cast my cynical eye on what I considered to be overly optimistic projections of a Duke return to glory in 2008. I asserted that I'd noticed the development a trend wherein ESPN college basketball analysts would attempt to minimize poor NCAA Tournament showings by Duke with the promise of an immediate return to dominance for the Blue Devils in the upcoming season (and NCAA Tournament), courtesy of yet another stellar incoming Duke recruiting class:

"Not to worry, Dukies. Vitale jubilantly pointed to Duke's outstanding recruiting class for 2007. He told the Sports Center audience that the Devils will get right back to kickin' ass and takin' names in '08. Help is on the way! Duke has some serious studs coming in! The Dukies will be back at the top next year, baby!

Sound familiar? It should. Again, Vitale said exactly the same thing last year. Hey, how could Mike Krzyzewski be expected win Tournament games with overachievers like (Shelden) Williams and (J.J.) Redick? Once Duke replaced that dead weight with incoming super freshmen such as Gerald Henderson and Jon Scheyer, Vitale pleaded, they would be right back on top of college basketball in '07. Baby!"

And I questioned the logic by which Vitale (and other analysts) arrived at the conclusion that Duke was destined for greatness in 2008:

"Vitale would have college basketball fans believe that some scrawny white (kid) named Kyle Singler is going to step on campus next year, and -as a skinny, goofy looking freshman- lead Duke back to the promised land. Naw, Dickie V, you're not putting undue pressure on a kid who's still in high school. Kyle Singler already has enough to stress about: graduation, whom to take to Prom, what to do after Prom, etc. Now he's got to figure out how to single-handedly lead Duke back to the Final Four next year.

Just as Jon Scheyer and Gerald Henderson were going to lead Duke back to the Final Four - as skinny freshmen- this year.

Just as Greg Paulus was supposed to do -as a skinny freshman- last year."

It has been my contention that over the last three years, the national sports media has over-hyped and overrated Duke (and, to a lesser degree, the entire Atlantic Coast Conference). And ESPN has done so, in large part, because of programming considerations.

Duke has truly become college basketball's equivalent of Notre Dame football.

Consider the fact that just as every Notre Dame football game is broadcast to a national television audience, so too is every Duke basketball game. No other college basketball program can claim that distinction. It doesn't matter whether Duke plays an opponent that would naturally generate a large television audience -- such as when they play their arch-rival, North Carolina (in yet another "battle of the century," or "game for the ages") -- or whether Duke plays an early season patsy such as Florida A&M or Cornell. Every single Duke game is nationally televised.

And most of those games are broadcast on ESPN. Duke basketball has all but become the centerpiece of ESPN's college basketball programming. Therefore, it's in ESPN's best interest to have Dick Vitale and their other college basketball analysts constantly doing their best to hype up and, hopefully, generate interest in Duke basketball.

Another way in which Duke basketball mirrors Notre Dame football is in the way Duke basketball generates extreme emotional responses from sports fans. Just like Notre Dame, plenty of folks love Duke and everything that Duke basketball purports to represent, but a hell of a lot more people absolutely DESPISE Duke, and loathe everything that they perceive Duke basketball to represent.

Although contributing Drive and Dish basketball commentator Mark Buckets will, undoubtedly, balk at the following characterization, Duke basketball (and, for that matter, Duke University) is widely perceived as being arrogant.

Duke is college basketball's "blue blood" program du jour. And unlike college programs that have previously been (and occasionally still are) referred to as "college basketball blue bloods" (Kentucky, Kansas, UCLA, Indiana, North Carolina), Duke's basketball program represents an institution (Duke University) which is an extremely selective, highly reputable, ungodly expensive private university that boasts an amazing $6 billion dollar endowment.

What's more, the nutty Duke students who camp outside Cameron Indoor Stadium for weeks before each Duke game, paint their faces and bodies blue, pack Cameron's 9,000 (or so) seats to the rafters, boisterously bop up and down while chanting, screaming and taunting, and mercilessly ridicule opposing teams' players (often with predictions of those players' pending status as future professional subordinates/flunkees of said Cameron Crazies) do nothing to minimize the public's widespread perception of Duke as an elitist institution, comprised of arrogant little prick students who come from wealthy, privileged Northeastern families.

It's easy to understand why lots of people don't like Duke. Duke is an easy target. And it doesn't help that Duke's coach, Mike Krzyzewski, often comes across as aloof and arrogant himself.

There's just no way around it: Duke basketball generates passion. People either love Duke or they hate Duke. There's really very little in-between. Just as in the case of Notre Dame football.

So ESPN's constant promotion of Duke should be seen as a smart move. Duke's basketball program is different from any other program in the college basketball. Duke basketball equates to drama. For ESPN, programming and promoting Duke hoops is a no brainer. It's kind of like their version of having a soap opera or reality show.

Duke basketball games have esentially become ESPN's answer to American Idol and Dancing With the Stars. Duke basketball broadcasts provide drama, intrigue and live/unscripted competition.

And you either root for Duke or you root against them. But one thing you aren't is apathetic.

In my opinion, that's why ESPN and the national media hype Duke up so much. It has everything to do with drama and with television programming.

So guys like Dick Vitale talk about Duke until the cows come home.

But, in the end, it results in Duke being perpetually overrated (although that, in no way, should detract from the actual success -- 3 National Championships, multiple Final Four appearances -- that the Duke basketball program has had over the past 25 years).

Before filling out my NCAA brackets, I really thought that West Virginia had a good chance of beating Duke. And before the season started, I thought that Duke was overrated and that their youth and inexperience (along with their weaknesses at point guard and in the post) would prevent them from being an elite team and from making a deep run in hte 2008 NCAA Tournament.

But as the season went along (and especially after Duke went into the Dean Smith Center and beat North Carolina in February), I began to let the chatter affect my better judgment. That's why I ultimately picked Duke over West Virginia.

I won't be fooled again.