It Must Be Said
By TonySo, Duke lost in round 2 of the NCAA Tournament. Honestly, they were lucky to get that far. Duke was the second best team in the ACC during the regular season, and they lost in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament. They were knocked out of the NCAA Tournament by the 5th best team in the Big East. But my point is not to praise the Big East. My point is not to compare the Big East to the ACC, even though West Virginia beat Duke, Villanova (#12 seed, 8th during Big East regular season) beat Clemson (#5 seed, 3rd during ACC season), and Syracuse (#9 in the Big East) beat Maryland (#6 in the ACC) in the NIT. My point is to criticize the American College Basketball Media for not seeing the reality of the situation.
RPI, Strength of Schedule, Last 12 Games, blah, blah, blah. I heard a term this season for the first time when analyzing NCAA teams: the Eye Test. Basically that means, “Watch games.” Who was truly surprised by the West Virginia win? Not anybody who watched West Virginia and Duke play during the last five months. Duke played in a bad conference this season. North Carolina is very good, deserving of a #1 ranking. But Memphis is very good, deserving of a #1 ranking, too. The greatness of Memphis does not increase the value of Conference USA, and it should be the same for North Carolina in the ACC. Why does the press always assume that the teams from the ACC are superior? Why was Duke ranked in the Top 15 all season long? How many years in a row will Duke be eliminated in the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament before the media starts realizing the truth?
The Top 25 rankings are a joke, they really are. Most of the time the voters just amend their selections from the previous week, meaning that if a team is in the first preseason poll, it could take them a couple of months to become unranked, even if they lose half of their games. It’s time for the knowledgeable basketball people in the country to take a stand. It’s time to say out loud, on television the following, “Duke did not deserve a #2 seed in this tournament. They’ve been an above average team in a below average conference, and they should have probably been a #5 or #6 seed.”
Duke is Duke, so they always get the benefit of the doubt - from the media, from the refs, from the criminal justice system. But now it’s getting to the point where the light bulbs should be going on for people around the country. Fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice shame on me. ‘Me’ is the selection committee, and the Associated Press, and the Coaches Poll voters. This season, Coach Bob Huggins did not get to vote in the Coaches Poll.
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March 25th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I read an excellent article (though I can’t remember where) discussing Duke’s recent under-performance at the end of each season. The author suggested that because of Duke’s golden basketball reputation, many recruits who are considering Duke (as early as HS freshman and sophs) will start to be placed higher in player rankings because of their interest in Duke and vice versa.
As a result, even when these players turn out to be average to good players, they are often considered “great recruits” by the national media, winning accolades such as McD’s all-americans. This feedback loop ensures that Duke is often touted as having great recruiting classes coming in, even though it was the players’ interest in Duke (and not their actual talents) that made them highly regarded in the first place!
Because Duke is perceived to have “excellent recruits” coming in to a new season, this often leads to high pre-season and early rankings. Duke is usually able to ride this reputation all the way to the post-season, where they start to stumble as they face tougher, more underrated teams.
It strikes me as ironic that the same fawning press that hypes Duke as one of basketball’s great programs created this paradox. We can only hope that Dick Vitale’s continued adulation will keep Duke circling the drain for years to come.