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“Duke always gets the calls.” It is a tale as old as the Scriptures… even if it’s wrong.
Some ideas are so deeply baked into the national imagination that it is impossible to extract them from the minds of millions of Americans. One is that Duke gets all the breaks. Yes, it gets a lot of them, don’t get me wrong, but just as surely not all of them.
Look at the 2019 NCAA Tournament bracket, for example.
VCU or UCF in the round of 32? That won’t be a problem… but from the Sweet 16 onward, it is as though the selection committee said in the war room, “Let’s make this thing as difficult for Coach K and Zion Williamson as humanly possible.”
Virginia Tech WITH Justin Robinson in Washington, D.C., with a house full of Hokies?
Michigan State and one of the great March coaches in college basketball history, Tom Izzo?
Gonzaga and Mark Few WITH a healthy (or at least healthi-ER) Killian Tillie?
Those could easily be Duke’s opponents in the Sweet 16, Elite Eight, and Final Four.
Buzz Williams, Izzo, Few. Those are the coaches Duke could face before the national championship game against Kentucky or North Carolina or Virginia.
Justin Robinson, Cassius Winston, and Gonzaga’s 17th-year guard Josh Perkins. Those are the ball-handlers and floor leaders Duke could face in the three rounds before the national title game against a heavyweight opponent.
Forget for a moment about winning the national title. Duke might have to play three very tough games to get there.
For a No. 1 overall seed — a team which, in theory, is supposed to receive an easier bracket than the other No. 1 seeds on the board — this is an atrocious bracket. It is anything but soft, anything but favorable.
Duke displaced Virginia as the top overall seed in the tournament with its ACC Tournament championship, and yet Virginia got the kind of bracket one would expect of a No. 1 overall seed.
What does this remind me of? 2010 Duke… but only in the sense that those Blue Devils deserved a bracket as hard as the one the 2019 team has just received. THIS Duke team in 2019 deserved a bracket as easy as the one the 2010 team gained, with Purdue in the Sweet 16 and Baylor (the actual opponent) or a soft Villanova team (which lost in the round of 32) waiting in the Elite Eight.
The 2010 Duke team should have been a No. 2 seed. The 2010 West Virginia team deserved a No. 1 seed, but instead gained a 2 seed AND was placed in the same region as No. 1 Kentucky. The 2010 West Virginia team was essentially treated the same way Michigan State was treated this year. Duke benefited from the 2010 bracketing debacle, all the way to the national title.
It is as though this 2019 absurdity — with Duke receiving the short end of the stick this time — is a way of the fates saying, “Well, we screwed up in 2010 and made it easy for you, Coach K. Now that you have Zion healthy and flourishing again, it’s time for us to give you a harder bracket than you deserved. Show us you can overcome it and swat everyone to the side, anyway.”
I’m not glad Duke got jobbed with this bracket. I hate bracketing errors and make it a point to say every damn year that the selection committee devotes way too little time, thought and energy to bracketing — it ALWAYS shows up in the deficient product.
It is nevertheless fascinating that after recalling how cushy a bracket Duke received — and didn’t deserve — in 2010, the script has been flipped nine years later. This is also a bracket Duke didn’t deserve or earn… but it is on the side of UNFAIRNESS, not Charmin-soft ease and comfort.
If Duke wins it all against this bracket, the Blue Devils will be remembered as an all-time great college basketball team.
Let’s see if these guys are up to the challenge.
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