Duke Was No Fluke

The Final Score of the last game of the season, the last game of America’s tournament, April Madness, was Duke 68 — Wisconsin 63. The game was better than that score would indicate. The game was closer than that score would indicate. It was the kind of back and forth, competitive game that made basketball purists drool.

The game was back and forth basketball throughout the early parts of the game. It was tied 31 to 31 at the half. It was so close, half the experts thought the tied game at the half favored Wisconsin. The other half of the experts pretty much thought it favored Duke. It was the exciting type of basketball that makes the Final Four into the kind of entertainment spectacle that gets even the non-basketball fans liking it.

It was supposed to be a game between Duke’s big man Jahlil Okafor against Wisconsin’s big man Frank Kaminsky. The two biggest stars of college basketball this year. Both players a shade under 7 feet tall. One (Kaminsky) was college basketball’s consensus player of the year. The other (Okafor) was professional basketball’s consensus number one draft pick. Both were so obviously the best players on each of their respective teams, you wondered why they couldn’t just go one on one against each other and settle the game that way.

Okay, you could say that it was Wisconsin’s Kaminsky AND their other big man Sam Dekker against Duke’s Okafor AND their other big man Justise Winslow. It should have been. It could have been. But, when the game was on the line, Wisconsin allowed it to be a game of Duke’s guards vs. the Badger guards.

Cut to a point in the game in the second half where everything seemed like Wisconsin had just taken control of the game by a score of 48 to 39. Okafor AND Winslow, the two Duke studs, were on the bench with three fouls each. Duke calls time out and puts backup (and freshman) guard Grayson Allen into the game. Allen starts playing like a man possessed, acting as if HE will score the points that absolutely will get his team back in the game. Wisconsin, instead of going inside to Kaminsky, and forcing the play onto Duke with their star big man playing against Duke’s backup center, allowed their own guards to make most of the plays.

It was the style of play that got Duke right back into the game, because THEIR guards are better than Wisconsin’s guards. Wisconsin, which had seemed like they had control of the game at the Wisconsin pace, suddenly was allowing the game to be played at the Duke pace. Duke’s star point guard (and later to be named MVP of the tournament) Tyus Jones started to take control of that part of the game that Grayson Allen wasn’t controlling. He hit several big shots. The two guards scored most of the Duke points of the second half and ended up as the stars of this game, ahead of their much more celebrated teammates.

Even though there were a couple of controversial foul calls favoring Duke and against Wisconsin, AND an out of bounds call that the referees viewed on a replay monitor and STILL got wrong, Duke was the better team down the stretch (of a game that they were NOT the better team earlier that half).

And they did what they did with star Okafor in foul trouble during much of that key stretch, and even though he was outplayed by Kaminsky, HE came back in the game and made a few of the big Duke plays down the stretch, while Wisconsin decided to make most of their plays WITHOUT their star getting the key touches. And that proved to be Wisconsin’s fatal mistake.

It was a game where both teams played at such a high level that it wouldn’t have surprised anybody if either team had made those plays down the stretch and won. It really could have been Wisconsin that won that game. But it wasn’t to be. Duke won the game. Wisconsin didn’t lose the game. THAT is what made the game the most satisfying. The Final Four has that amazing survivalist aspect that makes the tournament into a battle of WHO can survive the three weeks of intense, competitive games against other teams that want to win it just as badly as anyone else.

68 teams started the tournament. 67 teams ended the season with a loss. And one team proved it deserved to win the championship by becoming unbeatable. The Duke Blue Devils had what it took to win the NCAA championship this year. They became unbeatable once the tournament started.

Everyone thought Kentucky would be the team that was unbeatable, but, though they had the talent, they didn’t have a well enough coached team. They didn’t have the poise to win a close game down the stretch. Duke did. In the NCAA final, a really good Duke team beat a really good Wisconsin team, because on this night, Duke had “the right stuff” when it mattered. Their win, their championship, was no fluke.