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This question is easy to answer. Duke doesnt win when there are neutral officials calling the game.

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Great point about the officials. Coach K has certainly had plenty of success. But I really believe he is an overrrated coach. He whines and fusses when it does not go his way. He criticizes other coaches (Roy Williams) He simply lacks class. That type of whiney, victimized example will produce players who lack mental toughness. He sets the stage for them to fail when faced with adversity.

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They don't have any strong big men. They will be very good next season since they are are only losing one person.

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It astounds me that absolutely no one on ESPN knew this was coming. If Duke’s jumpers don’t drop, they can’t score. No size in the interior doesn’t help them either. Coach K has never been a big defensive minded guy and their only chance at getting big buckets in transition is off long rebounds and not trapping guys. Any team with any kind of size could have beaten this year’s team. Coach K has fallen by the wayside of the “one and done” philosophy most guys have about going to school nowadays. He needs to stop trying to land that coveted McDonald’s All-American and recruit players that give you quality minutes with tough interior play and good rebounding skills.

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I put together a printable NCAA Bracket if anyone is interested.

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Duke and its fans are collective turds. Duke gets the best palyers in the country every year but due to a mediocre coach can not win the tough games or for that matter make the easy games tough (Belmont) and then lose to a less than spectacular WV team.

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I picked West Virginia over Duke. Paulus, Singler, Sheyer et al are the same player. Three-point shooting guards who don't play defense, don't score in the paint and don't win in March. They need some good forwards and a center to be good again.

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Duke and its fans are collective turds. Duke gets the best palyers in the country every year but due to a mediocre coach can not win the tough games or for that matter make the easy games tough (Belmont) and then lose to a less than spectacular WV team.

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Less than spectacular WV team??? What an idiot. WV beat their first round team by 10 points, what did Duke win by? A last second bucket to a #15 team. Duke is overrated and alot of it is due to the media. They think that Duke, NC, Georgetown, Kansas and a few other teams are the only one's in the country. They all are overrated. WV and Belmont were not scared of Duke and they proved that they can play, and beat, teams of that caliber. They deserve to be mentioned when you talk about elite teams. GO EEEERRRR'S

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Duke dissappoints because, the way the "experts" pump them up year after year, anything short of the Final Four is a dissappointment for them, and no program can be that successful. It's the same problem that other consistenly overrated teams (Ohio State in football, the Yankees) have: when the media builds a team up to be invincible, people are shocked when they lose. But no team is invincible.

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I hate Duke for the same reasons I hate Notre Dame football....With all the HS all americans and high draft choices they fail to produce. West Virginias best player never could get a second look from the great DUKE. They squander the tallent and opportunity every time.

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Upsets happen thats why we watch.

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As I read this article and some of the comments it sounds very much like the two past elections for President of the United States where everyone's common sense and logic went out the door and everyone voted based solely on emotion. Stop for a moment and look at the parity that is happening in college basketball, particularly with many of the mid majors. There are numerous kids who are not recruited by the name schools (where many name players are one and done), and they stay and play through their senior year. This is happening more and more as evidenced by the advancement of schools like Siena, Western Kentucky, San Diego, Belmont, and Davidson as well as others. We used to call these teams Cinderella, when Gonzaga, Valparaiso, George Mason and others crashed the party. Now, as they recruit based upon their advancement in the tournament, they get players who want to play right away instead of sitting and waiting their turn at many of the more noticed basketball schools (does Stephen Curry ring a bell?). These players generally stay the four full years, and there is nothing like having that senior leadership. As far as being elite McDonald's All American, many of the above posters got it right with the media, as they can either make you or break you. They are the ones who make the lists up each year as well as the pundits who tout who is the best player for their particular recruiting service. Listen to the announcers as they call a game and you can see them switch allegience to a team in a heartbeat. It's all about how many newspapers, magazines, and the air space that can be sold by the media. For those who rip Coach K, thats your perogative as venters on a website, but a 28-6 record with a team made up of mostly outside shooters is not a bad job. The missing ingredient was and still is a big man (6'8" to 7', who is athletic and has not only a wide body but some athleticism as well as a nasty disposition. Keep things in perspective, Duke only graduates Demarcus Nelson with everyone else coming back. They were a very young team with mostly sophomore and freshmen players, with room for a "big" to fit in. Still the days of just waltzing into the tournament as many of the name teams did in the past is over. One or two teams may be that skilled or lucky, but from here on out the NCAA's will be a war.

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You guys are complete morons.


Duke is overrated, it's all the medias fault, Duke gets all the calls. Can we come up with something new for once?

Was it the media who won 28 games this season?
Overrated? Prior to the tournament, which team had the highest winning percentage against top-25 teams? Oh wait, they get all the calls...that's right. But Duke and Texas A&M shot the same amount of free throws this year. So I guess the Aggies get all the calls too.

Hey, The Unreliable Narrator...you posted the exact same dribble at The Big Lead. What do you do, just roam web sites, looking to post the same comments about Duke everywhere? Get a life, will ya.

Coach K doesn't care about defense? Did you watch your first college game this weekend? Duke's had the most defensive players of years over the last 25 years, more than any other school. They missed 17 straight 3s, that's why they lost. Not because of defense.

Posts 9-11...you guys hit the nail right on the head.

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The thing I don't get about this conversation is this. Why does it surprise people so much when Duke loses? I'm no Dookie, but any idiot can see that Duke is still a top-flight program. They won lots of games this year, including one over UNC, who I expect to win the national title. But that doesn't mean that they're going to win every game. Upsets happen all the time in basketball; all that has to happen is for a couple of guys on the underdog team to get hot and play inspired ball. Moreover, the odds for a team to make the Final Four, much less to win the national title, are pretty low, even for talented teams like Duke.

So what's the big deal? It's this: the media propagates a stupid myth that teams like Duke can't lose, and then people are shocked when they do. And then the media wins, b/c they can sell you stories like the one I read on ESPN.com the other day about the "Downfall of the Duke Mystique." Only an idiot would think Duke is done; I fully expect them to win a title sometime soon. Then ESPN will tell us about the resurrection of Duke.

And like I said, I'm not a fan of theirs, and honestly I enjoy watching them lose. But they're still a top program.

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Why are Duke haters so irrational and imbecilic? Few of their arguments hold any water because their minds are so distorted with unmitigated hatred. Though I agree that Duke is often overrated (because of their coach and long history of excellence), this makes it easier for them to fail because it is so difficult to live up to such lofty and perhaps unrealistic expectations. While I can't explain what happened to Duke in the NCAA's (who had been consistently tough and confident for most of the season), some things are obvious, and should be to even Duke haters: 1) they were guard oriented and their only two "big men", Lance Thomas and Brian Zoubek have terrible hands and are not inside enforcers and; 2) they have no "superstars" that all the best teams have. Why don't other schools with great basketball traditions who have lost recently, feel the same wratt (such as Kentucky, UCONN and Indiana). At least Duke runs a clean program unlike Kentuky and UCONN ( a fitting name). Apparently, that counts for nothing. Lastly, can you imagine how much people would hate Tyler Hansborough IF he played for Duke? Since he doesn't play for Duke, however, he gets by with a pass,.....from a school that gets NBA players all the time.

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These sports writers kill me, AOL included,there is more press on Duke losing then WVU winning,last year they kept WVU out of the tournament for just this reason they did not want a low seed from a strong conference beating a team like Duke Early on.Winning the NIT last year having a 20 win season and dominating UCon in the Big East tournament was the only reason they got in this year. But God forbid they put WVU in the same catagory as UCon Duke UCLA or UNC.

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Being a Duke graduate it is diffucult for me to watch the struggles of the past few years. Coach K still runs a great program and I am proud of the type of players he recruits. But after watching basically EVERY game since Coach K came to Duke - success comes down to the point guard position. In college basketball today you MUST have a point guard that can break down the defense when there is 10 seconds to go on the shot clock. Duke has not had a point guard that can accomplish this since Jason Williams (which corresponds to the Duke struggles). The point guard must also be a stopper and not allow the defensive breakdown as well. The Duke program is fine - we are just waiting for the next Tommy Amaker / Bobby Hurley / Jason Williams. Greg Paulus plays hard and is a good shooting guard, but he does not have the physical skills as point guard to keep Duke at the level of past teams.

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Having been a Duke fan since the days of Gminski, Gene Banks, and Jim Spanarkel. Anyone remember Chip Engelland? Anyway, I can sum what I think are Duke's failures in one word: Olympics. I think Coach K is a great recruiter but when his time is split between Amex commercials, Duke basketball, and now the rigors of an Olympic team, I think he is stretched too far, and his recruiting suffers. To make my point, look no further than the obvious position Duke lacks now: Power forward/Center. And the #1 HS player rated by Rivals.com this year is Greg Monroe, 6'10" 220 lbs - who chose G-Town over Duke. Maybe had Coach K spent more time recruiting, and not had the Olympic team to worry about, he would have been available to convince the big fella that he was the remaining piece for a dominate Duke team, and landed the only missing position from a team that was still in the top 5 all year.

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Duke went as far as they could go this year with what they have. They blasted Wisconsin on a good day, gave UNC one of their two losses (at the Dean Dome, no less), and got 28 wins. So, it was a successful season, but not good enough for their critics.

They had no big man they could count on (Thomas can't finish, Zoubek is not an athlete), a totally wasted season from Taylor King (who can shoot unguarded, but has NO floor game whatsoever), and a terrible final 10 games from Singler (who looked gassed and out of it), WHY were they expected to do more? Go back and check where the "experts" placed them in the pre-season --- about 15-20, which is where they will likely finish in the final poll.

Add some muscle, get some size, then let's see what happens next year. God love DeMarcus Nelson, but his game came down to three things (turnovers, charges, and not scoring on those kamikaze (sp?) drives to the rim). And he can't shoot free throws--props for busting his tail for 4 years, but
he was never the answer. Everybody else comes back, soooo, we will see.

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