Equal Time for Duke Haters
By Jake Duhaime
Apr 3, 2006, 23:36
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| It's just the women, but Duke hating knows no boundaries. |
BOSTON – I’m not going to pretend to hide my bias here.
I hate Duke University. I hate the “Harvard of the South” label. I hate Coach K. I hate the pep band geeks who haven’t stopped being the class nerd. I hate Dick Vitale’s toungebaths of J.J. Redick. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.
How much do I hate Duke? I’d pay more for the annual locker room images of the depressed Dukies, most of them in tears, following an NCAA tournament than I would the Mona Lisa. It’s like Christmas morning in my house when those pictures hit the Internet.
So I’m starting to really hate the fact that Duke could be walking away with an NCAA title on Tuesday night. Since I’m a Bostonian, I consider the “Building formerly known as the FleetCenter” to be my house. The lone saving grace is that it’s the Duke women’s basketball team and not the Polish car salesman and the All-American poet laureate cutting down the nets.
But at least I can claim a sense of victory if Duke loses. Maryland falls victim to the Duke double standard regardless of Tuesday’s result. A victory and the Cameron Crazies will be the first ones to point out that it‘s just women‘s basketball. “Who cares?” they’ll say. “Listen buddy I’ve got three words that sum up Maryland Basketball for you……N-I-T.”
The blue-and-white-striped band geeks will follow with the following song and dance.
“Not our rivals, clap clap clap clap clap. Not our rivals, clap clap clap clap clap.”
They’ll wax poetic about Jason Williams scoring about a trillion points in a minute to stun Maryland at Cole Fieldhouse in 2001. Then they’ll talk about the huge collapse in the 2001 NCAA Final Four in Minneapolis. And that National Championship the following season didn’t count according to the Dukies…because it didn’t go through Duke.
That’s the best-case scenario. A Duke victory, however, is the only thing worse than being the team manager responsible for washing Gary Williams’ pit-stained suits. A victory means that the same band geeks who spend more time with blow up dolls than real women will continue to boast about Duke University’s superiority over everything in basketball, academics, daddy’s bank account and life in general.
Makes me sick just thinking about it.
This will be fourth Duke-Maryland meeting this season. Duke won the first two rather convincingly before losing to the Terps in the ACC semifinal. In that game, Duke, which led the nation in scoring, shot an uncharacteristic 35 percent from the field and went 4-of-18 from 3-point range.
“The win against Duke in the ACC Tournament really helped us out more than people think it did,” notes freshman G/F Marissa Coleman at Monday’s press conference. “It got that monkey off our back, we hadn't beaten them in years, and to gain that confidence and know we can beat them really helped.”
Maryland certainly won’t get the same looks down low that it did against North Carolina. Duke’s Alison Bales towers over others on the floor with her 6-foot-7-inch frame. It will be up to Crystal Langhorne to neutralize her presence down low and guards Kristi Toliver and Shay Doran to hit shots from the perimeter.
"A lot of people have been saying Shay hasn't been shooting the ball well,” Coleman says. “But she does a lot of stuff that doesn't hit the box score and she's been our leader all season long. Last night she made key plays down the stretch."
Doran’s scouting report should read like this; A Jewish kid from Long Island that just can‘t find a good bagel in College Park. How did she not end up at Duke? (Like the rest of Long Island and New Jersey) She looks a tad like Sue Bird with the ear-to-ear smile and the flopping ponytail. She, like Bird before her, played her high school ball at Christ the King in New York.
But if Maryland is going to take home the title, she’s going to have to play like Sue Bird on both ends of the floor. There wasn’t any doubt that her play on the defensive end was crucial on Sunday night, but can she shut down Monique Curry and provide the offensive spark her team desperately needs in order to emerge victorious?
Otherwise I’ll have to go back to enjoying the Duke lacrosse scandal…even though I probably shouldn’t be.
Jake
Duhaime is a regular contributor to Atomic Sports Meida and is covering the NCAA women's Final Four in Boston. Since 1972,
he has spent more time with Lord Stanley's Cup than have his beloved
Bruins. When he isn't convincing people the NHL Playoffs are riveting
television, he can be found going sober for months at a time, saving up
petty cash to go to the Super Bowl, Final Four, World Series or any
other major sporting event out there. He can be reached at
jake.duhaime@atomicsportsmedia.com.
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